Pido nunmuldo eobshi

What this film does have a lot of: blood, cigarette smoke (*cough*), profanity (if you want to learn Korean swear words this is your flick) and double-crossings. All for a bag full of Won.

I prefer to see my fight scenes as if I'm watching a ballet. I want to be able to see the whole stage. "Pido" films its fight scenes as if the viewer was a referee in a boxing match. This frustrated me. Both sexes get equal opportunity pummeling.

Mix several parts "Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels," a dash of "Go," a smidgen of "True Romance," and fights as brutal as "Fight Club" (but with women giving and taking beatings as much or moreso than the men) -- put it all through the filter of a Korean gangster film and you have "No Blood, No Tears," a tour de force by hot young director Seung-wan Ryoo ("Die Bad"; "Crying Fist").

The plot is complex. But not so that you can't follow what is going on as it happens. Don't plan on being two jumps ahead, however. Just let the movie come to you and you will be rewarded.

The whole issue of the heist and most of the fights (which are pretty brutal) don't really come into play until the second half of the film, but there is plenty of good stuff in the first half to get you there.

The story is centered around two good female leads. Hye-yeong Lee plays Kyeong-seon, who owes the local neighborhood loan shark a lot of money. She's got a certain past and tends to solve problems by a beer bottle across the head or a kick to the gut. Then we have Su-ji (played by Do-yeon Jeon)--the frequently smacked around moll of a low-level gangster. A chance encounter puts them together and gets the wheels turning on how they can make off with a whole lot of the high-level gangster's money.

There are double crosses, triple crosses, and lots of surprises along the way. A multitude of other characters play important roles. Inept police detectives; idiotic street punks who switch back and forth from being informants for the police and trying to get in on the goods themselves; loan collectors who don't know if they should start taking off fingers or sit down and eat lunch with the debtor. Perhaps most impressive is a gangster tough (credited as "Silent Man") played by famed martial arts action director Doo-hong Jung. He has a great fight scene where he really gets to strut his stuff.

If you are tired of the same old Hollywood plots, fights, and chases, do yourself a favor and seek this film out.

'No Blood No Tears' is the only film I've seen so far of Ryoo's (and I had never heard of it; I simply found it for $3 at a department store that was going out of business, thought it looked interesting and decided to take a chance on it). It was a very satisfying blind-buy, a contemporary and Asian spin on the 'Thelma and Louise' motif. The action and comedic touches are surefire, and the irony of who ends up with the loot was compelling. The friendship mix of the two women (older night owl taxi driver who's deadbeat ex-husband owes everybody money and makes her life miserable, and who desperately wants to find her daughter, with the young girlfriend of a ex-boxer hood who likes to beat her to a pulp) who desperately need each other is well-written and portrayed, and there is truly something for everybody in this successful entry in the legion of Quentin Tarantino/Guy Ritchie-inspired films of the past generation...

No Blood No Tears, the second feature by Corean action auteur, Ryu Seung Wan, isn't so much an action picture, but more of a pulp noir/caper movie like a number of the films of Guy Ritchie and Quentin Tarantino.

The story itself features a rather large cast of characters, but our protagonists are two women, one with an abusive ex-boxer boyfriend turned criminal and the other an ex-con turned taxi-driver who owes some gangsters some money. A somewhat complicated scheme is hatched by multiple parties to steal money from an illegal dog-fighting event and it appears as though multiple gangs are involved, as well as the police, some wannabe criminals. Once the scheme begins, all the parties go for the bag of money and multiple double crosses are revealed, along with fists flying, feet running and a whole lot of people getting beaten up and/or killed. All of which is clear, even if it's a little chaotic at times.

Humor is present in the film, more in the form of irony or just people (or the audience) reacting to the madness that's occurring, but it's not a comedy. The action is stylish and some of the choices in direction, including some crazy tracking over surprisingly long choreographed fight sequences, can be surprising both in effectiveness and audacity. The art direction is also notable, the film being drenched in dark tones, perfectly setting the atmosphere.

I think all thesps do a good job with the increasingly deranged boyfriend being the most surprising of all as his character changes. It's not an easy film to watch due to the heaping of physical non-glorified violence, so those that can't take such images should generally stay away. Also, if you don't pay attention or try to do something else while watching this film, you might lose track of what's going on due to the expansiveness of the cast. And things do get quite chaotic when multiple groups are encountering each other (and also quite amusing as well, in a maddening "can it really get any crazier?" kind of way).

Fans of crime/heist movies with a little grit and humor, like those of the aforementioned directors will find a lot to like here. I personally enjoyed the insanity, the comedy, some kick ass violence, but I did wish it would've relented just a little on some of the pummeling that happened. It sometimes just got brutal to watch such an unfair match-up. But overall, I enjoyed this energized, entertaining, funny sequence of increasingly crazy events. 8/10.

"No Blood No Tears" was a movie that I was really looking forward to watching. Why? Well because it was a Third Windows Film, and they usually have really good (and often quite remarkable) Asian movies out on the market. Plus "No Blood No Tears" also had Do-yeon Jeon on the cast list (and she was amazing in "The Harmonium in my Memory").

Now having seen this movie, I must admit that I feel somewhat disillusioned, because this movie was nowhere as interesting or exciting as I had hoped. It was like director, Seung-wan Ryoo, wanted to accomplish a lot of things all at once, but didn't fully manage to juggle all the balls he had put up in the air. The movie was trying to tell too many tales at the same time, and it ended up being a rather confusing, stupid and irritating mess of a story. Sure, "No Blood No Tears" had its moments, but in general there was just not enough of a red thread throughout the story to hang on to.

The acting in the movie was actually quite good, and I think that goes for everyone in the movie, because the actors and actresses portrayed their characters quite well and came off as believable characters on the screen.

It was a shame that there was too much going on in the movie at the same time and that the movie was jumping back and forth trying to tie together all the various story lines and characters. It just didn't work out as the director had intended. And that is the reason why I give the movie only a mediocre grade. "No Blood No Tears" could have been a much better movie, had the director not trying to throw so many different elements into one project. Would have been better to focus on a couple of the story lines and tie them together in a more constructed way.

But still, Do-yeon Jeon (playing Su-ji) and Hye-yeong Lee (playing Kyeong-seon) - the two main characters - actually made the movie worth enough to sit through till the end.