Neglected by her stripper mom and shunned by kids at school, lonely little So-mi (Kim Sae-ron) forms a bond of friendship with Tae-shik (Won Bin), a laconic, solitary man recovering from some traumatic event in his past and who now runs the local pawnshop. Then one day So-mi and her mother (Kim Hyo-seo) disappear. Tae-shik discovers they have been abducted by gangland siblings Mang-seok (Kim Hee-won) and Jong-seok (Kim Sung-oh), in retaliation for So-mi’s mom stealing a cache of drug money. On the trail of his young friend, Tae-shik recovers his lethal skills as a former special agent and cuts a bloody swathe through the sleazy underworld, hoping to save So-mi’s life.
Korea’s biggest home-grown hit of 2010, The Man From Nowhere will ring a few bells for anyone who has seen Leon (1995), Man on Fire (2003) and Taken (2008), given the plot involves an unlikely friendship between a precocious little girl and a monosyllabic assassin, her kidnap by a powerful drugs cartel and a former secret agent trawling the underworld and putting dormant killing skills to good use. What lifts this above being simply derivative are the fresh and invigorating performances delivered by broodingly handsome matinee idol Won Bin and remarkable newcomer Kim Sae-ron. Both are terrific and took home deserved honours at the Korean Film Awards. Without their compelling relationship, The Man From Nowhere would be just another run-of-the-mill action thriller. As it is, the film offers few surprises.
Its smartest twist occurs in the film’s initial third as the villains frame Tae-shik as a fall guy for both their drug trafficking activities and the killing of a peripheral character. Thereafter, Tae-shik shoots, stabs and kicks his way through an array of astonishingly callous thugs, including Thai hit-man Ramrowan (Thanayong Wongtrakul), occasionally humanised by flashbacks to the death of his pregnant wife, and pursued by seemingly corrupt cop Kim Chi-gon (Kim Tae-hoon), while So-mi is drawn into the murky world of drug trafficking as she becomes a drug mule. Unlike the best work of Park Chan-wook, John Woo, Ringo Lam or “Beat” Takeshi Kitano, the film has no viewpoint to offer on such social ills or the ethics of vigilante violence. Writer-director Lee Jeong-beom sticks largely to visceral, exciting action delivered with considerable panache and style, punctuated by the occasional profound suggestion that Tae-shik perceives So-mi as the reincarnation of his unborn child. Beyond that like those characters played by Liam Neeson and Denzel Washington before him, our ultra-violent hero is little more than the personification of your average moviegoer's righteous fury at such squalid evils as organ theft and child trafficking.
There are the usual bugbears associated with style-conscious action movie-making: disjointed storytelling that leaves some plot points hard to follow and supporting characters played by preening pretty boys who either deliver cartoon performances or let their haircuts do the talking. However, the film is never less than compelling and at its best maintains an emotional core often lacking in mainstream product.
