Night in Paradise

Director Park Hoon jung's consistency level over the years is just amazing, I wonder how he does it time and again on experimenting a wide range of genres, while keeping the core stories interesting to the viewers. Night in Paradise is about two luckless souls from the same world meeting each other in an island, and for a brief time, they learn to appreciate each other and enjoy each other's company before all hell breaks lose. It's a simple but compelling story. The main characters portray their tragic characters in a very relatable manner.

Cinematography is calm and composed beautifully in line with the mood of the scenes. Screenplay is well written, with well defined characters and interlaced with interesting sub plots. Editing is neat but a 132 minute runtime, could have been a little short. Production design, Music, costumes and makeup are very good. Most of the actors did a wonderful job, especially, the leads Jeon Yeo-been and Uhm Tae-goo, who portray their characters quite convincingly.

Overall, Night of Paradise is story of a man targeted by gangsters and a woman who has given up on life. The movie is a slow burner, with a lot of bleak and brutal moments along with some great fight sequences and action scenes, it is wonderfully laced with a sprinkling of black humour. Night of Paradise is recommended for all Korean movie fans, around the world. 7.3 stars out of 10 for its simple, uncomplicated plot presented in a sophisticated style.

Amazing writing, directing, cinematography. Will definitely win awards at the end of this year. I'd put it down as one of the best movies since 2020 started.

My girlfriend and I gave it a standing ovation in our bedroom.

READ: If you are too lazy to read subtitles, any films other than those of your native language are NOT for you. It changes the whole dynamic/experience. I wouldn't dare to hear some crappy voiceovers on a masterpiece such as this. Any low reviews you see are the pawns who watched it dubbed, which shouldn't ever be done to any movie, in any language.

I desperately guessed that the best Korean crime flicks were history, after the terrific wave of the early 2000's: bloody, gritty, brutal and so moving in the same time. I won't repeat the list, there were too many of them. And since several years now, we had to puke watching so many craps, more than the Hollywood garbage junks, with plenty of action and those damn F...HAPPY ENDINGS that I neraly forgot what the korean film industry was. But now, I can breath again. This film is a real hit in the groin. Awesome. I spent one hour sending mails to my friends, ordering them not to miss this jewell, at any cost. I will continue the whole day.

If you set out to make a gangster movie in these times. This is how it should be done, right hand man loses his family, the blame is placed on a rival gang, his grief causes him to sacrifice his career in the family on revenge, in order to smooth things over, he has to leave town and settle elsewhere, in a small town he stays with a old gangster and his quirky niece , meanwhile back on the home front , the two rival gangs battle for supremacy, and things don't work in favor of the gang of the right hand man who had to leave town, the big boss wants revenge and don't care how he obtains it, this sets up the second half of this film quite well in my opinion, because the right hand man and the quirky niece both get to know each other and discover they both have their share of grief and sorrow in their life, to which it becomes apparently clear that things will not get better at all, the right hand gets betrayed by his boss and this set off a chain of explosive and tragic events, this story of grief, betrayal and revenge is bloody, unrelenting yet at the same time atmospheric, moody and a beautifully filmed production, the third act of this movie got me applauding , the last Korean gangster movie that I really liked a lot was the Yellow sea, it had all the elements of this movie , the acting in this movie was excellent, it had some unintentional hilarious lines between the main bosses , the main character who portrayed the right hand man was fantastic, the director did a excellent job of not watering down nothing, he gave us , a straight to the point gangster movie, if you like it hardcore and gritty welcome aboard, I recommend this movie , if you enjoy crime thrillers .

I almost skipped this movie because of the 5.8 stars (at the time of this review). But something clicked inside me when I watched the trailer. I have no idea idea why some people rated this movie so low. It's not a masterpiece, but definitely deserves some credit.

Nice acting, great cinematography, great music. I liked the dark tone from the start. I really liked some conversations. Some of them were surreal and it actually worked nicely.

Not much else to add here. Just don't expect non-stop action. For me, its main selling point was the dramatic scenes and I got what I expected from this movie. But I have to admit, the final scene is amazing. You'll know what I mean when you watch it!