THE MAN FROM NOWHERE

This is the first of two South Korean films to make it onto the list (Top 25 of 2010) this year.  “The Man From Nowhere” is a strange film because it alternates between being just a normal run-of-the-mill thriller, and then at times, it becomes quite special. 

The film is about a mysterious man who lives above a pawn shop, who talks to no-one, never smiles and all of his neighbours believe that he is dangerous.  The only person he interacts with is a young girl, the daughter of one of his neighbours.  One day, through no fault of his own, he gets mixed up in the double crossing between two gang members, where at the same time his neighbour is murdered and her daughter kidnapped.  The gang that have taken the girl are in a number of shady businesses from drugs to black market organ donations, which usually involves the kids working in the production of the drugs until their bodies can not take it anymore, and then they are killed and their organs are taken, and sold.  When our “hero” works all of this out, he will stop at nothing to get back the young girl who has touched his heart. 

Unfortunately for the villains of the piece, our mystery man, turns out to have a black-ops military background and is especially useful with a knife.  As I said, the film can be quite flat in places (most of the scenes involving the police, for instance), but then absolute brilliance happens in the next scene.  The climatic knife fight at the end is amazing (and quite rightly, is what this film is known for), and very brutal. 

Won Bin plays our titular hero, and one of the things that bugged me about the film is that he always looked too pretty.  His hair was always perfect, his clothes, the same, he just didn’t look dirty enough, which for some reason distracted me.  I must say that this film did make me appreciate his performance in “Mother” so much more (he plays the retarded son accused of murder in that film).  Overall, “The Man From Nowhere” is a good film, well directed and very entertaining.  Sure it has its faults (that cop who overacted in every scene), but it is well worth seeing.

Ranked 25 in Top 25 of 2010