Hot Blooded Youth (Movie Review)

I've decided I like doing movie reviews. With only a few hours of material to cover, it's significantly easier to find the film's strengths and weaknesses, rather than doing an entire drama, which may be so long that you might forget about the little details or miss important things. Today I want to review Hot Blooded Youth, a movie set in the 1980s about, in a phrase, teenage gangs.

Hot Blooded Youth (which is also often translated to Hot Young Bloods, but that makes no sense) is set in the South Korean countryside and mostly focuses around two people and their growth stories. Firstly, Joong-gil, the town's legendary playboy, and secondly, his childhood friend Young-sook, who is now the tough leader of a gang but is evidently in love with him. He won't even approach her nowadays, since the gang leader of a rival school has claimed Young-sook as his own. When a beautiful girl from the city shows up, the dynamics between these four teenagers are shaken up viciously.

My main motivation for watching this film was the fact that it stars Lee Jong-suk alongside Park Bo-young. The idea of him playing a weakling casanova and her playing a tiny gangster queen seemed ridiculous on paper, since it was worlds away from the kind of characters they've played before. But these two were wonderful, as expected, and just proved their versatility through this film. The highlight was the film was undoubtedly how much these two grew up over the course of the story, and it probably wouldn't have been quite as obvious with less skilled actors. Not to mention the accents they put on were flawless. Kim Young-kwang was far less memorable, since I've always found him a little bland regardless of how outrageous his characters are, but Lee Se-young was a firecracker and I won't be forgetting her any time soon. 

  The first half of the film was more comedic. Whilst the comedy itself wasn't to my taste - too embarrassing to be funny - I actually liked how realistic it seemed. Teenagers humiliate themselves and do stupid things for fun, especially when they're in love. Despite how awkward I found it, it seemed true to life. 

  It isn't strange for romantic-comedies to use the first half of their airtime to develop the characters, and then the second half to introduce the worst of the angst. This is a pattern the Hong Sisters commonly use, and it's used here. The only glaring fault this film seems to have, though, is that the first half of the film doesn't really seem to merge with the melodramatic second half. The conflict goes from 0 to 10 incredibly fast, so fast that it almost breaks Hot Blooded Youth into two distinctive halves. Regardless, I was still satisfied with where the film ended, and it never really forgot the moral it set out to teach. 

  As for romance, there wasn't much to speak of in this romance film. This isn't a complaint - the connection between Joong-gil and Young-sook was treated with subtlety for most of the film, but it was always there. Their love was almost like a prize for becoming adults, when they could finally be honest and take responsibility for themselves. Hot Blooded Youth has a nice message, if you're willing to look for it.

Overall, this film was a bizarre little concoction of violence and growing pains. I loved how the character growth was handled, but at times the movie's mostly realistic nature was traded out for something far more dramatic. I mean, two people fell out of a train into a lake, guys, come on. If Hot Blooded Youth has taught me anything, it's that growing up is hard, no matter where or when you are, but those with passion and determination can go on to do anything.