COURTESY HIFF Kyung-jin gets Myung-woo to help her paint her apartment, by informing him that a good boyfriend must help his girlfriend.

Korean film is brisk
but bittersweet

Part slapstick action-comedy, part melodramatic romance, "Windstruck" will whip you around until you don't know whether to laugh or cry.

"Windstruck" Screens 9 p.m. Tuesday at Signature Dole Cannery 18.

The Korean film reunites director Kwak Jae-yong with Jun Ji-hyun, who plays female police officer Kyung-jin as a woman who can best any man on the force, with a temper bound to get her in hot water.

When we first see her, she's about to leap off a building, but the story goes back to her meeting with Myung-woo (Jang Hyuk), whom she mistakes for a purse snatcher who deserves to be beaten to a pulp.

She continues to throttle him in the police station, and when he comes in a few days later to perform community service alongside a police officer, he's chagrined to find himself matched with his captor.

As they patrol the streets, Kyung-jin witnesses what she believes is a drug deal and gives chase, cuffing the reluctant Myung-woo to her side, and the two find themselves in the midst of a gunbattle between rival gangs.

A good-natured sort, Myung-woo is also dragged into a romance with the temperamental, derring-do police officer, but there's too much talk of death, promises and sacrifice for their relationship to have a happy outcome, and the rest of the story might be compared to the Demi Moore/Patrick Swayze film "Ghost," with a love that transcends the grave, and made palpable by inexplicable gusts of wind.

The story is contemporary, brisk and irreverent in style, yet the sentiment is old-fashioned and bittersweet, and sure to win the hearts of fans of Korean soaps. This is one for incurable romantics.