Hard Romanticker(2011)

Writer-director Gu Su-yeon's new film draws on his own semiautobiographical account of growing up as a delinquent zainichi Korean (Japanese-born, but of Korean ancestry) in the seaside city of Shimonoseki in Yamaguchi Prefecture, a working-class hellhole overflowing with sex and fury. Day after day, (fictional) Gu finds fresh foes and makes the local hoodlums want to kick his ass. While working multiple dead-end part-time jobs, he cruises around town on his scooter in search of gangland trouble: leaping across rooftops with irate hordes of punks in hot pursuit, running off with a fetching belle in a sailor suit, rescuing a schoolgirl from being gang-raped at a glue-sniffing orgy…

Genre: Drama

Director: Su-yeon Gu

Actors: Shôta Matsuda, Kento Nagayama, Tokio Emoto, Sei Ashina, Keiko Awaji, Kaname Endô, Yûya Endô, Honsen Haga, Hakuryû, Yûma Ishigaki

Release date: 2011-11-12

Country of origin: Japan

Length: 1h 48m

Ratings:

• 5.9/10