In 1997, young people in Korea were known as the X-generation; a new generation that couldn’t be defined by existing terms. Facing their own hardships, Beat (1997) became the Korean equivalent of Rebel Without a Cause. Hong Kong action films a major influence and Beat never hid the fact it was affected by this genre. It had the newest, most outstanding mise-en-scène for the time, with the director attempting to combine youth film, school movies and romance in the film. Beat follows the lives of Min (Jung Woo-sung), his girlfriend Romi (Ko So-young), his friends Hwan-gyu (Im Chang-jung) and Tae-soo (Yu Oh-seong), from high school into their early twenties; an account of the X-generation’s frustrations at the time and a realization of powerful fantasy. Beat was the first film director Kim Sung-soo made together with actor Jung Woo-sung, they also teamed up on City of the Rising Sun (1998), Musa-The Warrior (2001) and Asura: The City of Madness (2016). (JEONG Han-seok)