South Korean filmmaker Kim Chang-hoon signs with “Hopeless”, a social thriller of incredible violence

The director appropriates the codes of films about the mafia to denounce social violence. “Hopeless”, an intelligent and subversive film.

Passages of physical and mental torture are filmed in close-up. The violence, shown, assumed, of certain scenes in the South Korean film Hopeless, in French cinemas on April 17, is particularly unsustainable.

This is the bias of Kim Chang-hoon, author and director, who does not seek to hide the violence of the social relations which govern part of his country’s society. The filmmaker forces his audience to look poverty in the eyes, those who try to escape it and those who profit from it. At the heart of all this darkness, however, there is a form of resilience.

“I’m trying to change”

The film opens with a high school student, Yeon-gyu, played masterfully by Xa-bin Hong, who attacks a classmate by hitting him in the face with a stone. Yeon-gyu boils from the inside. His helplessness undermines him. So he dreams of a country where “there is equality”, The Netherlands. Penniless, his family barely survives. His alcoholic stepfather, whose business is failing, and who promises to change and become better, beats him daily. Yeon-gyu, who no longer sees light or hope anywhere, gets closer to a gang, attracted by its charismatic and mysterious leader, Chi-geon, played by Song Joong-ki who has agreed not to be paid so that this film can see the light of day.

“Call me brother, not boss”, the latter asks the high school student, looking for a substitute father or older brother. The young man’s initiation into the world of the underworld turns into a nightmare. By fleeing family violence, he finds himself a prisoner of other violence. “The country where there is equality does not exist”, warns his new protector. And it’s up to Yeon-gyu to discover, unbeknownst to him, the price of this protection.

Hopeless is not yet another film about the underworld. It is closer to a black social thriller, very black. For his first feature film, Kim Chang-hoon achieves a masterstroke. He works his audience on the body. He sees as an inevitable consequence of inequality an implacable mechanism where only the most powerful escape, thanks to a vulnerable and submissive political power.

Hopeless, carried by two exceptional actors, is a social fresco, depicted with incredible violence as well. Selected in the Un Certain Regard category, at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival and at Reims Polar in April 2024, Hopeless doesn’t hesitate to appropriate codes from films about the mafia to go further.

The sheet

Gender : Crime, Drama
Director: Kim Chang-hoon
Actors: Hong Xa-bin, Song Joong-ki, Kim Hyoung-seo
Country : Korea
Duration: 2h04
Exit : April 17, 2024
Distributor: Bac Films
Synopsis: To escape a life without a future and without hope, a young man is drawn into a spiral of violence which will lead him to the heart of a criminal organization led by a charismatic leader.