A Hard Day begins with a horrible night. Police detective Ko (Lee Sun-kyun) is racing along to make it to his mother’s funeral when he runs over a man. The only witnesses is a dog – or so Ko, and viewers, are led to believe.
I’m a terrible son, Ko tells the corpse, but he’s something else too – a corrupt detective who is being investigated by another police unit. Fortunately for Ko, the bribery probe is shut down and he is assigned to a murder investigation – of the very man he has run over.
Kim Seong-hun, one of the directors of the terrific period zombie drama Kingdom, really knows how to lay out the twists. A Hard Day (2014), which is available on Prime Video, is a breathless as well as breath-taking thriller. The script is filled with self-serving characters and a few decent souls trying to make the best out of a complicated situation.
The Korean film has typical black humour and technical polish. Lee Sun-kyun, the lovely actor from Parasite (2019) – he died by suicide in 2023 – is superb as Ko. Desperate to escape discovery, Ko lands himself in one hot mess after one, which Lee portrays with unerring timing.
A Hard Day has been remade in a few other languages. In 2020, there were rumours about a Hindi version, which hasn’t seen the light of day yet. If it does happen, the challenge will be to maintain the original movie’s dark, relentless tone and desist from unnecessary moralising. For a film that has an ethically compromised hero, A Hard Day does an excellent job of bringing viewers to his side.
