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Korea · 2020
2h 11m
Director Park Hoon-jung
Starring Um Tae-goo, Jeon Yeo-been, Cha Seung-won, Lee Ki-young
Genre Action, Crime, Drama, Thriller
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Tae-Gu, a gang member, decides to leave his life of crime behind him to care for his nephew and sick sister. But when a rival gang targets him, Tae-Gu is forced to flee to Jeju Island. There, he meets Jae-Yeon, a woman wrestling with her own dark secrets.
Night In Paradise is an exceptional resource for anyone trying to understand how stories can be told within the frame, even as it consistently trips on its relentless grimdark tendencies. There are no pleasant people to be found here; there is no path that doesn’t lead to the grave.
Park makes a noble attempt to suffuse the meditative soulfulness of Takeshi Kitano’s “Fireworks” into the propulsive genre tropes established by more recent (and more Korean) forebearers like “A Bittersweet Life,” but he just can’t find the same poetry in that silent pain as he’s able to produce from the screaming kind.
The Hollywood Reporter by Deborah Young
Night in Paradise contains a lot of good plotting, several amusing characters and a decent array of exciting action scenes and bloodshed. But it is indulgently long.
Screen Daily by Jonathan Romney
You just wish that director Park had managed to execute the film as a whole with the crisp efficacy of some of his individual sequences.
The Guardian by Leslie Felperin
Leisurely pacing rather draws it all out a bit, but there’s real inventiveness to the way Park wrong-foots the viewer and handles the operatic displays of gunfire and death – and the leads are rather charming.
Paste Magazine by Natalia Keogan
While the visual and thematic richness of Night in Paradise could adequately carry the film on their own, the wry comedic tone that often infiltrates even the darkest exchanges between characters enhances the overall emotional payoff.
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