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Cast: Jang Dong-gun, Kim Min-hee, Brian Tee
Abandoned by his mother shortly after immigrating to America, Gon is raised by the mafia and grows up to become a cold-blooded hitman. While on a job, Gon makes the mistake of killing an innocent young girl. A flood of guilt takes over his life and the situation becomes worse when his boss assigns him the job of killing the young girl's mother. The trouble is, he falls in love with her.
"No Tears for the Dead" tells the story of Gon, a hitman. As the film opens Gon is on a job in the U.S., his mission is to kill a certain man. Little does he know the man brought his daughter along with him and Gon accidentally kills the girl as well. When he reports back to his boss he is given his next assignment, go to South Korea and kill the little girl's mother to get her out of her misery. But there is more at play here than meets the eye. After arriving in South Korea Gon immediately begins trailing The girl's mom but his guilt gets the best of him so he decides to protect the woman rather than kill her.
That is the basic story line but there is a bit more involved then just that. I am not going to get into all that so not to ruin the film for those waiting and wanting to see it. Writer/Director, Jeong-beom Lee has only done three films to date but if you had the pleasure of seeing his last film, "The Man from Nowhere" you know the kind of action film he is capable of making. "No Tears for the Dead" is another example of how good this filmmaker is.
The action scenes are few especially early on in the film but it picks up later in the film and it is tense, brutal and thrilling. This is edge of your seat action but do out be fooled, there is a very good story here as well. It may not be original but that never seems to matter. It is a heart wrenching story of a mother grieving over the loss of her daughter but there is a lot more going on and there is also plenty of twists and turns as well.
As great as the action scenes are Lee does not sacrifices story for it. I was drawn into the story right from the start, you get engaged right away and you quickly gain feelings for the main characters. This is about as good an action/drama as you are going to find. Hollywood needs to take notes from Asian cinema.
Available on DVD and Blu-ray with Special features that include:
Making Of
Commentary
You can order the Blu-ray HERE and the DVD HERE.
I loved "No Tears for the Dead" and highly recommend it to all action fans. The English Dub track is also very well done for those that do not like to read subtitles.
Released by CJ Entertainment
**** 1/2 Out Of *****