No Tears for the Dead

At a restaurant somewhere in America, professional hitman Gon quietly interacts with a little girl sitting alone at her table. He then leaves and makes his way to the warehouse behind the restaurant where a man named Ha Yun-guk is making a deal with a group of Russian thugs. Gon kills them all and retrieves Yun-guk's laptop. Hearing a sound behind the door, he shoots through it, only to realize it is the little girl who had followed him. The girl dies, traumatizing Gon so badly he nearly drinks himself to death.

Gon's close friend Chaoz, and his two Columbian teammates Alvaro and Juan take him back to their boss a Chinese-American Triad named Dai-Ban, but only after Alvaro punches Gon awake from his drunken stupor. Gon is to go to South Korea to tie up the loose end - the little girl's mother Choi Mo-gyeong, a risk manager at an investment firm. Gon stabs Alvaro' right hand in retaliation for punching him, triggering a vendetta within Alvaro and then threatens Dai-Ban to never send men to his home again or he will personally kill him.

At Seoul airport, Gon is received by his local contact Byun. As he studies Mo-gyeong's routine, he learns of her visits to her senile mother in a hospital, and watches as she mourns her daughter. Gon feels even more guilty and conflicted about his task.

Mo-gyeong is approached by Detective Park from the financial crimes task force. Park reveals that her supervisor John Lee is heavily suspected to have ties with organized crimes. Yun-guk had somehow gained access to John Lee's accounts for money laundering, and had begun trying to sell them to the Russian Mob when he got killed. Park ask Mo-gyeong whether her husband left anything that can implicate John Lee.

Due to the stress of losing her daughter Mo-gyeong eventually ends up in a hospital. However a Chinese-American street assassin under Dai Ban, named Asing is sent to eliminate her, after Asing successfully murders the other two loose ends. Gon arrives just in time to save Mo-gyeong, fighting off Asing. Asing escapes briefly but tries again to kill her in a parking lot. Gon intercepts Asing and shoots him dead.

Meanwhile, as Gon still hasn't completed his assignment, Dai-Ban sends Chaoz, Juan and Alvaro to South Korea to find him. Chaoz, meets a black market American arms dealer in Seoul, but quickly kills him and bodyguard to avoid paying for the firearms. They quickly close in on Mo-gyeong's apartment.

In her apartment, Mo-gyeong finds the file in a pen drive. Park's subordinate betrays and shoots him and takes the drive away. Immediately after giving the drive to John, he is killed by Byun. Byun's thugs prepares to kill Mo-gyeong, but Gon warns her with a call, then intervenes and kills or severely wounds several of them. However Chaoz and his teammates also arrive. Juan and Alvaro finish off the remaining thugs. During the chaos He creates a distraction knocking down Alvaro and engaging in a firefight with both Chaoz and Juan, allowing her to escape with a promise to reveal the truth about what happened to her daughter. However, she is captured by a wounded Alvaro.

Gon requests Chaoz to let Mo-gyeong go, but the latter declines. Gon then tips off the police about a bomb that goes off quickly and alerts them about another bomb.

Mo-gyeong is taken to the financial building, which is soon surrounded by the cops who believe it will be bombed. Gon ambushes Alvaro and fights him, Juan arrives to assist Alvaro but accidently kills him after Gon tricks Juan into shooting Alvaro. Juan hunts down Gon in revenge and discovers Gon wounded, but Gon manages to kill Juan with an improvised explosive involving a microwave.

Meanwhile, Mo-gyeong succeeds in preventing the money transfer to John Lee's account with the help of her computer. When John ignores Byun's money, the latter stabs him to death as Byun is fed up with John's constant abuse of power. At last, Gon battles Chaoz and both get severely wounded. Gon holds Chaoz at gunpoint but decides to spare him as he is not willing to kill his close friend.

Byun discovers Mo-gyeong and severely beats her up. He tries to rape her before she stabs him to death. After a conversation with Chaoz, Gon tells Mo-gyeong she needs to shoot the man coming to kill her since he is the one who killed her daughter.

However, Gon himself arrives and is shot by Mo-gyeong. Chaoz also arrives, snatches the shotgun from Mo-gyeong and tries to shoot her, but a dying Gon requests not to do so. The elevator goes down with a dead Gon's hand held by Chaoz while Mo-gyeong tries to reach out to Gon via radio after realizing Gon was the one who accidentally killed her daughter.

A flashback shows how Gon's mother, who abandoned him in the states and killed herself early on in the film, tells him not to cry as they would have a good life once they move to America. However, Gon continues to cry: both as a kid and an adult.

Writer-director Lee Jeong-beom interviewed special forces troops in South Korea and the United States to learn their reality and incorporate it into his screenplay.[2][8]

To prepare for his role, Jang Dong-gun underwent physical training for four months at a film action school in Seoul and combat training in the United States.[9][10][11][12]

No Tears for the Dead was released in South Korea on June 4, 2014. Despite its star director and actor, the film underperformed at the box office against Hollywood blockbusters X-Men: Days of Future Past and Edge of Tomorrow. It opened at fifth place on the box office, drawing 600,988 admissions.[13][14]

• Official website (in Korean)
• Crying Man on Facebook (in Korean)
• No Tears for the Dead at the Korean Movie Database
• No Tears for the Dead at IMDb
• No Tears for the Dead at HanCinema
• No Tears for the Dead at CJ Entertainment