Not too many South Korean films make tidal waves across the Pacific, but even the casual movie goer knows one thing is obvious: South Korea knows genre. From Oldboy to I Saw the Devil to last year’s Snowpiercer, filmmakers like Park Chan-wook and Bong Joon-ho have been churning out one head-turner after another. All of which should make this year’s delightfully madcap thriller A Hard Day from second-timer Kim Seong-hun no surprise at all, especially when it dips into the manic, the absurd, and the violent. For Kim, the film is an exercise in tension—little happens that isn’t directly stoking the flames—and in truth, little more needs to happen. While it’s not the most inventive film in its genre by any means, A Hard Day is deliciously entertaining and nail bitingly executed.

Lee Sun-kyun is Gun-soo, a hot tempered police detective having one hell of a bad day: his wife just filed for divorce, his mother just died, and his office was just raided by internal affairs. But all of those events amount to little compared to the headache he has in store. En route to his mother’s funeral, a slightly tipsy Gun-soo hits a pedestrian. In his blurred state of panic, the morally compromised Gun-soo stuffs the body into the trunk and heads off to his mother’s funeral—meaning he now has to bury two bodies. From there, Gun-soo must seemingly dig himself through the Earth’s core to get out of the hole he’s in.

After disposing of the body and covering the damage to his car, Gun-soo gets the first of many threatening calls by Park Chang-min (Cho Jin-woong), who witnessed the hit and run. Now the mysterious and ubiquitous Park wants the body back, and he’ll do anything to make Gun-soo get it for him. What follows is deranged, darkly hilarious, and hard to believe. Nevertheless, the film works shockingly well, even as it dips into the generic and rings one genre bell after another. The resulting film amounts to a devilish ride that flies by thanks to its accelerated pace.

For the most part, A Hard Day belongs to Lee. A good portion of the film’s 111 minutes focus squarely on Gun-soo’s face, watching him react to the insanity around him. Lee is maliciously excellent at the start as the malevolent, omnipotent detective, abusing his power with straight-faced sarcasm. But once things go sour, Lee’s hysteric, one-note Gun-soo is far less fun to watch. He screams and shouts into his phone, by turns terrified and angry, pushing forward the plot, while leaving his early magnetism and wit behind. The true gem of the film is Cho Jin-woong. His scenery-chewing Park Chang-min steals the screen every time he’s on it, taking pleasure in making fools of those around him and never missing a chance to mess with Gun-soo.

As the film switches gears from plot device to MacGuffin to set piece—a structure designed only to throw more and more obstacles in Gun-soo’s path—it manages to never lose its footing thanks to the crisp writing; the dialogue is surprisingly funny in the most unassuming ways, preferring subtle humour to levitate the despicable behavior often at hand. To boot, Kim Tae-sung’s cinematography makes everything look gorgeous: Seoul is lensed with a dynamic flare, the chase scenes are vibrant, and the cemetery in the rolling hills outside the city looks somber and pastoral.

As a pure thriller, A Hard Day works. All the beats are hit, the editing is kinetic, and composer Mok Young-jin’s pulsing score rises from one fever pitch to the next, helping the action steadily rise toward a chaotic climax. Kim’s direction from his own script is, for the most part, sharp, energetic, and full of promise for the future. His interests are clear, and by taking the film for what it is—instead of what it could be—it’s easy to get caught up in A Hard Day’s thrills.

A Hard Day opens in select theaters on Friday, July 17th, and will expand to Toronto and other cities on Friday, July 24th.

A few weeks ago I had started some serious contemplation on the South Dakota Film Festival. I’ve really only been to one film festival in my lifetime, but it was a big one, the Toronto International Film Festival. For me personally, TIFF is the granddaddy of film festivals (yes, I know there is a festival in the south of France called Cannes and yes, I know it’s massive). But TIFF is in my heart and I consider it a high benchmark for other festivals to follow, so I knew I had to keep my expectations in check.

I knew it wouldn’t be fair to compare the SDFF to TIFF. So I’ll be honest, I wasn’t expecting to see the same quality of films here. The Monday before the festival I told myself I had to do more research on the films to know which I was going to be looking forward to. Hell, I even convinced myself that I owed it to the filmmakers that I needed to do the research. But I actually think it would’ve been a disservice to have “favorites” going into the festival. So I decided not to revisit any of the films I would be seeing. And I don’t think my festival experience couldn’t have been any better. I was pleasantly surprised and unquestionably satisfied.

By not knowing anything about the films, I was able to sit back and put myself in the moment of each film. Truth be told, I had a blast even if I didn’t enjoy every single movie. But I would say I easily enjoyed 90% of the films I saw. That speaks volumes to a) the talented filmmakers on hand and b) the quality of the eye that the programmers of the SDFF have.

If there’s one thing the SDFF has taught me—or rather, reminded me—it’s that sometimes doesn’t matter how big the festival is, it’s the atmosphere of the theater itself. Every single person at the Capitol Theater this past weekend was there for a sole purpose, to appreciate the art of film. There were no other agendas brought to the table. It was simply a celebration of film.

The producers of the festival need to be commended. They put on a very warm and welcoming festival. I remember when Dustin and I were walking into the theater the for the first time and we weren’t sure what to expect, but immediately we were treated like two long lost family members that hadn’t been seen in years. Looking around over the weekend, it was pretty obvious that every single person attending was being treated the same way.

Sure the festival is tucked away in upstate South Dakota makign it a little out of the way from some areas, but if you’re in the region or if you just happen to be passing through, you will be hard pressed to find a better outlet for film lovers.

Our Top 15 films from SDFF

#1 – Gefallen

#2 – Noah

#3 – Ride with Larry

#4 – Sweet Crude Man Camp

#5 – Mirror

#6 – A Hard Day

#7 – Bring Me A Dream

#8 – The Garage

#9 – Dust of War

#10 – Family Meeting

#11 – Looking Past You

#12 – Storytime

#13 – After the Torment

#14 – Episode 5

#15 – Head Case

Looking Past You

An elderly woman, whose husband has just passed, is getting sick and tired of people ignoring her and her feelings. I kept thinking about that scene at the end of Network where the main character spouts, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!” She grabs his old service pistol and decides she’s going to get back the money that is owed to her after a financial advisor heartlessly tells her she’s broke. Well-acted and perfectly paced with a message that doesn’t banging on the heads of the audience, Looking Past You is good drama.

Family Meeting

One day the head of a household is on the family computer when he finds a video that leaves him speechless. He confronts his entire family at once and demands an explanation. It turns out that every one of the family members has made an embarrassing video, but no one know which he is referring to. Family Meeting is simple and more importantly, it made me laugh and as more and more truths start to reveal themselves, it only becomes funnier.

Episode 5

This short horror/comedy is a spoof of handheld POV horror films that had plenty of good laughs and even some creepy moments. An investigative paranormal TV crew is hired by a mattress company to probe their store for any clues of a haunting. What they find instead are plenty of laughs as they have seemingly been set up to show how great the prices are at the store. This is one of the shorts that I saw that I wish was about 20 minutes longer. The mood was perfectly set and the tension (when not relieved by the laughs) was stout.

Mirror

Mirror was far and away my favorite film of the first day. This short narrative never explains what exactly is going on and I was pretty fine with that. The film begins with a movie star flying home from Hollywood to visit family he hasn’t seen for a while. When he arrives home though, things begin to crack immediately. Mirror plays with perception the entire length of its run time. You never know what reality is. Are there really aliens abducting people? Is he just imagining things? There was a great shot of a man walking into a room in complete darkness as lights flickered on and off creating a strobe effect that is still making me blink. Loved the sound design and loved the score. This was easily the most ambitious film that I saw at the festival.

Bring Me a Dream

This nice little film was great amalgamation of a children’s best time story mixed to great effect with the horror genre. A young girl is told by her father to go to bed, but she’d rather stay up coloring in her book. Her father warns her that if she doesn’t go to bed, the Sandman could visit her and that it wouldn’t be a pretty sight. So of course she doesn’t heed his warning and sure enough things get creepy. Things in her room begin to come alive and move with free will, while the Sandman himself shows up to put the young girl to sleep. For how short this was, I was surprised at how much it affected me. It gets really scary really fast. The sound design was very good albeit a little too loud and the costume design for the Sandman himself was well done.

The Garage

This was a fun little horror short that never really makes any sense, but is nonetheless funny and at times even creepy. A young girl (who is a misfit at school) is sent to live with her older brother to clean up her act. The brother doesn’t ask much of her when it comes to chores, but he does want her to take out the trash and recycling to the non-attached garage behind the house. When she does, there seems to be some kind of entity that talks to her. There are shops tools hanging on the wall that only get bloodier and bloodier the more times she enters. While watching The Garage I couldn’t help but think of Sam Raimi and more specifically Drag Me to Hell. Funnily enough, the director of the short cited these two exact references during the Q&A after the film. While The Garage disappointingly ends out of nowhere, everything else that precedes it is worth the time.

A Hard Day

I will keep this review brief as I do not want to ruin any of what this utterly hilarious short shows. A man is looking to spice up his relationship with his girlfriend so he goes off to buy special pills that will enhance their “afternoon delight” He buys two different pills and is warned not to take them at the same time. Of course he doesn’t listen and the results make for easily the funniest film of the festival. A Hard Day doesn’t even try to apologize for being too raunchy, instead throwing in one fantastic gag after another. The lead actor was perfectly cast as a dimwit who seemed to do one wrong thing after another.

Dust of War

Dust of War was one of the headline films of the festival and the screening played to a packed house that ate it up. Dust of War is a post-apocalyptic science fiction film that when really boiled down to it is essentially a 90 minute chase film. That isn’t a complaint either. I’m a big fan of simple action films that don’t try to be anything more than what they are. The film adds in some sci-fi that felt out of place for me, but that is a small quibble. Set on a prairie in a world that has been ravaged by a war with an alien race with nothing left and only a few small groups of people are left to fight. A young girl is seen as the key to survival for the human race and two opposing forces want to use her in their own ways. A young quiet warrior, who lets his sword do his talking, teams up with the old wise cracking has been fighter, who still has some fight left in him, to rescue the young girl from the clutches of an evil general and his gang of marauders.

Dust of War is not trying to break new ground here. It is however, a competent low budget action film. The villain General Chizum, played by Bates Wilder, is of course spewing fantastic lines of poison aimed at his nemeses. His aim (and dialogue) is consistently undermined by Tom’s (Gary Graham) unwillingness to play along. The action scenes are fine and the chase scenes are well executed. And finally a movie that brings back under cranking to a car chase scene.

As I mentioned earlier, my only complaint was that Dust of War added some sci-fi elements in it did not seem to add much to the film. I wish it would have either gone for it all or kept it out altogether. The final reveal at the end leaves the audience begging for more, but considering what came before, it felt out of place. But that is more of a small complaint. As a whole I really dug the film. Screenwriter/Director Andrew Kightlinger made a film that, despite a low budget, shows ambition and enough quality for me to recommend it.