Mak Dong has just been released from the army and is on his way home when he helps out a woman on the train. A couple of guys are hassling her, and he steps in gets his ass kicked and gets booted off the train. She calls him, because she collected his luggage and they agree to meet. It turns out she is a mobster’s girlfriend and she gets him a job with the gang. Meanwhile his real family consists of 3 brothers, one is a wife beating detective, the second is severely handicapped and happy while the third sells eggs. He is still getting his ass kicked on a regular basis but the mob boss Bae Tse-Yong, takes him into the family and allows him to call him “Big Brother”. Apparently this is a big thing among Korean mobsters. Now he’s got two families and can’t seem to handle either of them but one of them is going to be the death of him. —IMDb
Lee was born in Daegu, the hub of Korea’s main conservative party. He graduated in 1981 with a degree in Korean Literature from Kyungpook National University in Daegu, where he spent much of his time in the theater, writing and directing plays. After a spell teaching Korean Language in high school, he established himself as a renowned novelist with his first novel Chonri in 1983. Later in his career, to the surprise of many, he turned to movie making.
Lee did not study filmmaking before starting out. He penned two screenplays, Park Kwang-su’s To the Starry Island in 1993 and A Single Spark in 1995. After being encouraged by his contemporaries to finally step behind the directors chair, Lee made Green Fish, a “critique of Korean society told through the eyes of a young man who becomes enmeshed in the criminal underworld”, in 1997.
In 2000, Lee made Peppermint Candy, a story following a single man in reverse chonology through 20 years… read more
