Hee-su is a low-level mobster in a dinky port city where he runs a hotel for the local Don and has racked up sizable debts. Hoping to erase his financial woes, he launches a new business, but a wildcard hoodlum suddenly returns and shakes things up. Soon a gang war is simmering between various underworld factions, with Hee-su trapped in between, navigating double- and triple-crosses amid unbridled violence. His relationships with his long-term lover and her wannabe criminal son, as well as his childhood cohort in crime, become dangerously fractured. This first-rate gangster film is based on a hit novel inspired by the author’s own netherworld experiences. Imbued with gritty realism as well as fantastic cinematic panache, Hot Blooded exposes human beings at their most base and despicable—even those who believe in honor among thieves.