Delivery boy Ben of mixed descent lives in the basement of a shabby Chinese restaurant. Telling everyone his parents have passed away, Ben′s life is made up of monotonous daily routine. While making a delivery, he runs into J.D., the enigmatic leader of a Korean youth gang, and becomes one of his soldiers. Despite his WASP-like looks, Ben considers himself a Korean, which perhaps explains a certain awe he has for J.D. As if they were looking at mirror images of themselves, the symmetrical nature of their lives momentarily loses its point of tangency with J.D′s disappearance, yet the tragic end for both reveals the two as being on opposite sides of the experience of being a Korean-American. The Cut Runs Deep disguises itself as a gangster film, while ridiculing mainstream America? prejudiced imagery of Koreans, or perhaps Asians in general. This is seen in the junk-food-eating, homosexual-oriented Asian characters, as well as in the trashy phone-sex girls. As a Korean-American director, John H. Lee employs an icy, sarcasm-laden indirect approach over a speech-like, direct representation of the alienation felt by minorities and the dilemma of being a Korean living in a foreign land. He maintains that acknowledging one? Korean nature in American society is like walking on a straw-chopper barefoot. Perhaps that is why The Cut Runs Deep refuses to carelessly overstate itself as a ′Korean′film.