Gangnam Blues

Gangnam Blues (2015)

강남 1970

Seoul 1970 the era of ambition and avarice.

Jong-dae and Yong-ki make a living by picking up paper and empty bottles. Both then join different gangster clan and becomes involved in a struggle of political interests over development in Gangnam, Seoul.

Date of release
2015-01-21
TMDB
6.4 / 10 (99)
Runtime
2h 15m
Genres
Action, Crime, Thriller
Director
Yoo Ha

Casting

Interesting facts

Gangnam Blues is a 2015 South Korean neo-noir action film written and directed by Yoo Ha, and starring Lee Min-ho and Kim Rae-won. The film is set in the 1970s against the backdrop of the real estate development of the Gangnam region of Seoul amidst socio-political turmoil and terrorism. The friendship of two childhood friends is tested as they find themselves entangled in the collusion and battles between political powers and criminal organizations.

Production

This was the final film in director-screenwriter Yoo Ha's "street series" trilogy, after Once Upon a Time in High School (2004) and A Dirty Carnival (2006). He called it "a story about people who are used, then discarded, about lives that are, like the buildings they live in, unauthorized. [...] represents the obsession over land ― land from which we are born, to which we return when we die. It is a feast of all things wretched."

Yoo originally didn't want to cast Lee Min-ho in the leading role, finding Lee's breakout performance in TV series Boys Over Flowers "a bit cheesy" and that the actor was "so handsome he was like a manhwa character". But after being convinced by his wife, Yoo realized the potentially huge impact of "flower boy" actors completely transforming their image, and together they collaborated to "burn to the ground" Lee's previous screen persona as a cha…

Yoo also asked actor Kim Rae-won to shed 15 kilograms since his character works as a rag man in the beginning of the film; Kim lost the weight in one month, which he said also made his fist-fighting scenes as a gangster more realistic.

Filming began on April 16, 2014 and wrapped on August 31, 2014.

The early Korean working title was Gangnam Blues (강남 블루스), which was changed to Gangnam 1970 in October 2014. Gangnam Blues was retained as the international English title.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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