Tell me if you’ve heard this one before: Mobster crosses paths with young kid. Kid grows up and idolizes mobster – dresses like him, even talks like him. Their fates become inextricably entwined.

Sounds like A BRONX TALE, doesn’t it? It also summarizes the plot of Eric Won’s KEN, which is more of an action picture than Robert De Niro’s directorial debut. It’s a film that values action and movement over narrative. Gangsters talk monotonously about double-crosses and business deals gone awry. Everything they say is utterly inconsequential. The film is more concerned with elemental things like honor and revenge. It’s a modern retelling of the old “I killed your master!” revenge tale, and it tells it in a bold, brutally efficient way.

The kid is named Ken. A homeless boy with fists of fury, Ken gets into a fight one day. This scene made me wonder: Do emo kids have trouble winning fights with all that hair in their eyes? The answer is yes, because Ken nearly gets knifed. A gangster named Jack saves him at the last second and takes him under his wing. I love the transition that comes after this scene. There’s no title card telling us that 20 years have passed. Instead, Won uses cinematic language to move the story along and show how the characters have progressed.

“Cinematic language” is the movie’s greatest strength. Won has a great sense of screen space and atmosphere, especially in the action scenes. The twist at the end really took me by surprise. I’m not sure it’s completely satisfying on a dramatic level, but it has some of the same out-of-nowhere nastiness as Park Chan-Wook’s brilliant OLDBOY.