No Tears for the Dead

Abandoned by his mother shortly after immigrating to America, Gon is raised by the mafia and grows up to become a cold-blooded hitman. While on a job, Gon makes the mistake of killing an innocent young girl. A flood of guilt takes over his life and the situation becomes worse when his boss assigns him the job of killing the young girl's mother. The trouble is, he falls in love with her.

When a movie can boast its “action scenes rival THE RAID 2”, you should stop what you’re doing and watch it immediately. THE RAID and THE RAID 2 are two epic films with some amazing fight choreography, so any movie that can come close to what they offer is a must-see. NO TEARS FOR THE DEAD is the latest release from director Jeong-Beom Lee, and while it does not offer as much fighting as THE RAID franchise, the film offers the same quality of action and much more. This movie in itself is epic, primarily because it is an emotional drama that is laced with intense action and brutal realism.

I am really impressed with how much emotion is in this film. The cast does an amazing job of conveying the guilt and agony they are experiencing to the audience, which makes this movie very immersive. I was spellbound just as much by the emotional suffering as the intense action sequences.

NO TEARS FOR THE DEAD is shot very well and looks great from a visual perspective. The cinematography is very well done, especially when it comes to the fight scenes. Too many times, cinematographers try to do too much, which makes the fighting choppy and hard to follow; not so, here. These are fluid and well-framed, making the action very enjoyable to watch.

As mentioned above, the cast is phenomenal, with Dong-gun Jang portraying Gon and Min-hee Kim as Mogyeong. Both give stellar performances, and both deserve the equivalent of Oscars, in my opinion. I hope to see both onscreen in future titles.