The Man From Nowhere kind of came out of nowhere.  A new director and a seemingly typical Korean crime-drama plot.  I mean; just look at the poster.  I’ve seen dozens of movies of a clean-shaven dude in a suit that has some kind of connection to enforcement that goes above the law.  Right?  Wrong.  The Man From Nowhere is easily the best revenge movie since Chan-wook Park’s Vengeance trilogy.

The Man From Nowhere has strange cadences.   The first hour is action-packed.  It introduces characters perfectly, without slowing down the flurry of mystery and crime scenes.  Just when it feels like the whole movie is going to be a full-on Jason Statham-style 90 minute spree, The Man From Nowhere takes a breath.  I bit of a long breath, then continues to another half hour of intense “holy shit”-ness.

In between all of this is incredible cinematography and an interesting storyline.  Incredibly beautiful establishing shots make one realize that there are certain visuals lacking from most “gritty epics” coming out of Asian film.  At times, it can even feel like an adventure film.  Even with all of the action going on, I never once felt like I didn’t know what was going on or confused by the characters.  The characters themselves are varied and give more realistic emotion than the typical Asian thriller.  One bad guy in particular reminds me of a character from a Japanese yakuza film or The Good, The Bad, and The Weird (it may have actually been the actor from the latter) – he is a bit cartoony, but complements the extreme end of the gangsters nicely.  The usual violin-heavy classical violence music underlies most dramatic scenes.

The one gripe I have with the film is the use of the little girl in the plot.  She gives a great performance – actually she delivers lines a little too well for her age, pulling me out of the film slightly – and is designed to really pull at the hearts of the audience.  In theory, this is fine, and almost needed to scrap together a plot so cluttered with action scenes.  While the plot is developed well and she worked to pull even myself to love her from the start, the ending relied a little too strongly on this.  Perhaps The Man From Nowhere is using a bit too much from a typical Hollywood endings.  I personally would have preferred something less one-sided, emotionally.

The Man From Nowhere is a great example of what Korean films do best.  It combines great film-making with crime, revenge, action, style, and prose.  While this film is more a straight-forward crime movie than the aforementioned Vengeance trilogy, it will nonetheless be loved by fans of Oldboy and Korean crime films.  While the focus is not on catching the audience off-guard in the final scene, it is a thrill to see The man From Nowhere play out.  Jeong-Beom Lee clearly has the talent to become one of the growing number of great Korean directors, and I anxiously await his future work.

Rating: 5 /5

Title: Thirst
Director: Park Chan-wook
Year: 2009
Genre: Drama
Format Reviewed: Film

Some Park Chan-wook films, specifically the Vengeance Trilogy films and Cut, are known for their realistic, brutal violence.  Adding J.S.A. and I’m A Cyborg… But That’s OK, the comparisons by plot are less, but the trademark features of a Park film are still present: silly humor and well-defined characters.  On all three of these levels, Thirst delivers.

Like Let The Right One In, Thirst is definitely a different take on the vampire genre.  The main character is a priest who donates his body to scientific research in order to find a cure for a disease and become a vampire by accident.  His motives are clearly good, and even as a vampire he refrains from killing any humans. The girl, on the other hand, becomes a vampire by choice.  As soon as she transforms, she kills at will and for pleasure.  Her whimsical nature about killing will likely bring joy to fans of the violence in the Vengeance movies.

Thirst never becomes a horror movie, nor does it really commit to a drama.  It’s pacing reflects the slow, method of Lady Vengeance, and is more of a study of the imagination surrounding vampires than the resolution of the plot itself.

Title: Let The Right One In
Director: Tomas Alfredson
Year: 2008
Genre: Drama
Format Reviewed: Bluray (US)

Let The Right One In is a much more serious take on a vampire story.  In fact, unlike Thirst, the ‘vampire parts’ of the movie are not the main focus.  At it’s core, Right One is a coming-of-age love story.  Vampire movies often include seduction or love, but this one has a classic “it’s not going to work out” love story that you would find in any other romance.  But this is definitely not the feel of the film.

The visuals of Let The Right One In are just as gory, and actually even more visceral than Thirst.  The kills in Let The Right One In, which are a combination of necessity and passion crime, are realistic and disturbing in a Fargo way, not to mention all the snow.  The imagery and slow pacing helps to make the small town and it’s citizens feel like an otherwise stable, quiet community.

In the end, Let The Right One In is a better film in almost every way.  The characters are developed better, the violence is stronger, the pacing is more deliberate (a plus to the drama), and ending much more powerful.  This isn’t to say Thirst is a bad film.  If it weren’t for Let The Right One In, I might declare it the best modern day vampire movie.  But Let The Right One In transcends the genre to deliver both a gruesome killer and a dramatic romance that delivers on both ends, perfectly.

While I would recommend Thirst to any Park Chan-wook or violence fan, Let The Right One In is a must see for anyone serious about film that can put up with a rated-R film.  The last 20 minutes are truly epic.

Ratings:
Thirst: 4 /5
Let The Right One In: 5 /5

Here are a bunch of mini reviews of things I watched from the festival and since then:

All Around Us (Gururi no Koto) -4/5 (CIFF09)
Great, though quite slow.  A family-drama that leaves many messages about living life and the connections between loved ones, especially a spouse.  Some characters were a bit annoying, though it can’t be helped if art imitates reality.

Surveillance -3/5 (CIFF09)
Not horrible, but could have been much better, in my opinion.  Some twists in the plot, some of which are predictable.  But this is no action movie.  It’s almost all dialogue, and awkward dialogue at that, for the first three-quarters of the film.  Probably would have been better as a short.

Chaser (Chugyeoja) – 5/5 (CIFF09)
Excellent thriller.  Korean movies contain some of the best psycho-killer/ detective movies and this is one of them for sure.  Though not as epic as a Park Chan-wook film, it has great pacting, characters, tone, and is interesting to watch.  Some gory parts.  Worth tracking down.

Sparrow (Man Jeuk) – 2/5 (CIFF09)
Too slow, and too long.  The plot is not interesting enough to make a whole movie out of, though it did hold my attention.  What was there was executed well and had some nice imagery.

White on Rice – 4/5 (CIFF09)
Good feel-good comedy.  You kind of root for the main character, and definitely grow to like his quirks.  You can see a lot of miscommunications that a Japanese-American may come across, and this really hits home if you have some familiarity with a non-native English speaker.  Plot is a bit uninspired, but serviceable for fun.

Meatball Machine – 1/5
After seeing the excellent Machine Girl, and iffy Tokyo Gore Police… I knew that Meatball Machine could go either way.  And it was bad.  Bad in a bad way.  Even for a B-movie, there is nothing really interesting that goes on.  The characters are beyond boring… enough to make a user manual seem a worthwhile use of time.  Gross out moments are not realistic or that gross if you’ve seen either of the mentioned ultra-gore movies.  Unfortunately, I can’t recommend this movie to even gore fans.

Tale of Two Sisters (Korean) – My 2nd viewing – 4/5
Although it’s probably one of the best Korean horror films I’ve seen, the rewatch isn’t that great.  The characters are a little boring and the pacing slow, but the ending and mystery is pretty good.  Although it’s a must see for asian horror fans, you really probably only need to see it once.  Compare with Ju-On, which I can watch many times and still enjoy.

Ahh, Park Chan-wook.  One of my three favorite directors from Korea.  The other two being Kim Ki-duk and the upcoming Joon-ho Bong.  You probably already know the stuff he’s done, so I’ll skip over his history.  He’s never let me down; every film has been superb, as far back as J.S.A.  But how does he hold up in comedy, a very different direction from his past?  Very well.

Actually the comedy in his other “violent” movies is a little more clever than I’m A Cyborg.  Maybe their punchlines are just more unexpected, but Cyborg is different in that is has a sense of humor more akin to other Korean comedies.  I would classify I’m A Cyborg’s humor as intelligent silliness.  It’s not quite slap-stick, though a lot of it is very oddball in a childish way.  This fits the setting, as the entire movie takes place in (or very nearby) an insane asylum.  Rolling around on the floor and hiding in a clock mantle provide up-front gags, but the real laughs are in word puns (at least in the English subs) and in small comments and imitations of the characters.

The cast mostly consists of your destined-to-be-paired two inmates.  One of which has come to the conclusion that she must be a cyborg.  The guy, who is acted by the apparently famous singer Rain, has a special power that he can transfer other inmates quirks and abilities to himself, in effect stealing their problems.  So, in order to relieve the cyborg of her human elements (like sympathy) which is holding her back from her goals, the thief will steal them away.  The supporting actors probably come out with the best gags, while the main characters move ahead the story, which is probably a good way to divide these elements up in a comedy.

Along the way, there are many silly or childish plot turns; ideas that you kind of just have to go along with.  This is no problem, though.  I mean, going into a Korean comedy you generally have to just forget about your age and laugh at everything shoved in your face.  There are several visual sequences which really elaborate on the inner thoughts or ambitions of our femme cyborg.  They keep the same tone of the rest of the film, though I felt that they bring you out of the movie a little too much.  Still… finger cannons are pretty sweet. The last scene where the thief has to teach the cyborg how to eat rice is absolutely hillarious.  The entire movie is worth watching for this one scene.

While I wouldn’t beg Park Chan-wook to make another comedy (more so because his serious stuff is so good), the movie is good and definitely worth watching.   Fans of his won’t necessarily like the movie just for good directing. Although it is done well, you should decide to watch this based on whether you like Korean humor in general.  If you don’t know, here’s a great place to start.

Rating – 4 /5

Who better to make a movie to convince that both there is something intrinsically good about saving life, no matter the cruelty that life may have brought, than Kim Ki-Duk? Breath is a distinctly Ki-Duk film, almost sharing enough elements to be called a spiritual successor, albeit in a much more confined setting, to Spring, Summer… Unfortunately for first-time Ki-Duk viewers, Breath probably won’t win you over on it’s own. In fact, it may be pretty hard to sit through if you aren’t a fan already.

This isn’t to say it’s a bad film or story. Certainly there’s something to be said about tastes in film, in that there are some that you can admit is a work of art, but may not enjoy. This makes it hard to review a movie in general. But relative to Ki-Duk’s past work it doesn’t live up to par (which is set very high to begin with). The story follows a woman whose discovered her husband is having an affair, and then takes to what is seemingly “getting back” at him by visiting a murderer on death’s row. She accomplishes something that just feels morally right by cheering him up and practically becoming his lover. By doing this, she keeps the inmate at peace and from committing suicide in his shared cell.

The setting is quite grim feeling, and the background music doesn’t uplift it much at all, save the protagonist’s seasonal songs which are a blast. I suppose one ought to think of the viewer as looking through the lens of the inmate, as many scenes at the start have obvious bars and a “looking from the inside” vibe. There’s a hint of black comedy in the inmate’s cell-mates and their antics. The woman’s background is quite interesting in that it reflects some of the feelings that the murderer’s victims may have felt. In this way, the inmate seems to review his life and becomes an anti-hero. But you could make an argument that every character in the film is an anti-hero. That’s just how Ki-Duk works.

So where should you go from here? I’d say if you are into meditations on life or are a fan of Ki-Duk’s other work, you should put this on your watch list. Otherwise, I would start with 3-Iron and see if you like that first.

Rating: 3 /5