Breathless

Breathless (Ttongpari, 2009) is a Korean crime drama from Yang Ik-june you can watch online on iFILM. Sang-hoon, a small-time debt collector, lives by his fists and his mouth — until a blunt teenage girl refuses to flinch.

Sang-hoon shakes down borrowers for a street loan shark and lashes out at the slightest provocation, the only language a childhood under a violent father ever taught him. Schoolgirl Yoon-hee gives it right back instead of backing away. Out of that street-corner clash grows a prickly, unlikely friendship between two people life has battered just as hard.

Yang Ik-june wrote it, directed it, and played the lead himself, then carried off the Tiger Award at Rotterdam for the effort. It's a hard watch — real dirt, real blood — but under the brawling sits a clear-eyed look at how cruelty gets handed down from one generation to the next. Not for everyone, yet it hits like a brick. Stream Breathless (2009) online on iFILM.