A Hard Day

You could very well say that the policeman Geon-soo has a fairly shitty day in auteur Kim Seong-hoon's latest feature A Hard Day. While at his mother's funeral, he is informed that the internal investigation unit is underway to turn his office upside down looking for proof of embezzlement. In a hurry to beat them to the office, he accidentally runs over a guy. In an effort to save his career, he decides to hide the body. In addition to this, he is in the middle of a divorce and he finds that his friends are not always to be trusted. A Hard Day is an intense and elegant thriller with hitchcockian rhythm and little respite. The protagonist might be calculating and deceiving at the expense of depth, but the director weighs up for this with his hyperrealistic style and the soundtrack, which is, for the lack of more nuanced words, perfect. vd

Suitable for audiences above 15 years of age.

Kim Seong-hoon has directed two films. The first of which was released in South Korea in 2006. It can be translated into How the Lack of Love Affects Two Men, and is a black comedy on that very topic. Kim is sadly quite unknown in the West, but hopefully the success of the solid A Hard Day will fix that. He also worked as assistant director on O-Haepidei (2003).