THE CITY OF VIOLENCE is a solid action film with an engaging, gangster-focused storyline and plenty of interesting characters to keep the viewer's attention. Things kick off with a brutal murder in the street, which leads to the victim's childhood friends reuniting to reminisce about the old days. We learn that each character has gone his own way: one's now a small-time gangster, another a cop. The gradual pursuit and uncovery of the truth eventually leads to violent recriminations for one and all.

Interestingly enough, the mystery-style plotting and gangster window-dressing eventually wear off until by the end the film becomes a riotous, ass-kicking extravaganza that bears more than a passing resemble to the infamous 'Crazy 88' action scene in KILL BILL: VOLUME 1. It works: the director contributes plenty of stylish flourishes and the action is well-filmed through, from huge, sprawling street fights early on to the epic bad-assery of the climax. It truly is an excellent ending, lifting what's come before and proving itself a film more than capable of holding its own against bigger productions.

Policeman Tae-su (Doo-hong Jung) returns to his hometown for the funeral of murdered childhood friend Wang-jae, where he is reunited with old pals Pil-ho (Beom-su Lee),Dong-hwan (Seok-yong Jeong) and Seok-hwan (Seung-wan Ryoo). Upon investigating Wang-jae's murder, Tae-su discovers that it was one of his own circle of friends who committed the crime.

The Koreans have given us some damn fine cinema in recent years, and having heard good things about The City of Violence, my expectations were running extremely high.

Which is probably where I went wrong.

Rather than being absolutely blown away by all aspects of the film, as I had hoped, I was merely entertained on a superficial level: the chaotic fight scenes are fun but uninspired (a few original, well choreographed 'killer moves' would have seriously improved matters); the drama is OK, but kinda clichéd, with the 'inseparable childhood friends divided as adults' theme having been done many times before; and the stylish visual touches employed by the director, whilst admittedly cool, do little to help one follow the plot and are used a tad too liberally for my liking.

The film also has a tendency to flip rather uncomfortably between comic book action and more realistic violence, with the film's heroes emerging relatively unscathed from a battle against 'Warriors'-style gangs of teenagers one minute, but taking on knife wielding gangsters with suitably bloody results the next.

I rate The City of Violence a reasonable 6.5 out of 10, generously rounded up to 7 for its particularly loathsome bad-guy, who finally gets his comeuppance after a prolonged battle inside a restaurant.

"The City of Violence" had gotten some fairly great reviews on Amazon, that is one of the main motives for why I bought it, that and also because I enjoy Asian cinema.

And now having seen "The City of Violence", I must say that I was thoroughly entertained and somewhat surprised by the movie. Initially, I found the story to be a little bit jumpy and not all that easy to grasp at first, as there is a lot of jumping to and fro and a heap of characters thrown into your face all at once. But once the dust settles and the movie trots on, it becomes really great. The story really isn't the main issue to carry the movie; the action and fighting is.

The action and fighting scenes and sequences were really nicely choreographed and executed. Lots of adrenaline and in-your-face fighting here. It is not the type of action as seen in many Chinese action movies, with wires and crazy jumping going on, no! This is done very realistic and believable. Though I do wonder how one manages to stay afoot after receiving such a beating as the two main characters did towards the end and final showdown (I guess they just had that Jean Claude Van Damme gene in them, eh?).

The people cast for the various roles were doing really great jobs with their roles, and I think it was nice to see so many unfamiliar faces on the cast list, which for me, means there are no associations to prior movies and roles hanging in the air. I enjoyed the performances by all people in "The City of Violence".

"The City of Violence" is a movie that you just have to watch if you are a fan of Asian action movies, it is an amazing Korean movie that is well worthy up along side some of the 'classic' Hong Kong action movies. And "The City of Violence" goes to prove that action doesn't have to come from Hollywood. And speaking of action, then the final showdown at the restaurant was one of the best fighting scenes I have ever witnessed in a movie, it just went on and on (but in a good way) and it was done so nicely.

Thumbs up for this movie, way up!