Nabbeun namja (2001)

User Rating:

6.8/10   

Director:

Ki-duk Kim

Writer:

Ki-duk Kim (writer)

Release Date:

11 February 2005 (USA)

Genre:

Drama

Tagline:

Trapped in a world of pleasure and pain ...

Plot:

In busy downtown Seoul, a thuggish young man notices a fresh-faced college student who sits on a bench...

Plot Keywords:

Bench | Seoul | College Student | Soldier | Loan Shark

Awards:

3 wins & 1 nomination

Cast

Jae-hyeon Jo	...	Han-ki
Won Seo	...	Sun-hwa
Yun-tae Kim	...	Yun-tae
Duek-mun Choi	...	Myeong-su
Yoon-young Choi	...	Hyun-ja
Yoo-jin Shin	...	Min-jung
Jung-young Kim	...	Eun-hye
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Gung-Min Nam	...	Hyun-su

Also Known As:

Bad Guy (International: English title) (literal title)

Runtime:

100 min

Country:

South Korea

Language:

Korean

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Certification:

Norway:15 | Italy:VM18 (DVD) (self-applied) | Argentina:18 | Finland:K-18 | Japan:R-15 | Netherlands:16 | Singapore:R21 | South Korea:18 | UK:18 | Hong Kong:III

Company:

LJ Film

Soundtrack:

Blott En Dag

A reality few people want to believe ...

This film could probably not have been made in the US without severely damaging the reputation of the producer on the grounds of political incorrectness. Further, my impression is that practically no reviewers recognize what is really going on here. It is about the psychological transformation of a very conservative, and somewhat shy woman, into what in the US we would hypocritically call a slut, i.e., a woman who wants sex and is not averse to using it to make a living as only a woman can. The movie also highlights a key fact about female psychology: nice guys come in last. Of course, women universally deny this, but it is nonetheless true. The only nice guy in the movie, the woman's former boyfriend, doesn't even get sex, he just gets beaten up. Further, the Bad Guy, the guy who forces this woman into prostitution, is in the end precisely the guy she chooses to be with! Sex, which was initially foisted upon a woman who resisted ferociously, effects a transformation. The woman who exists at the beginning of the movie is completely gone at the end, and it is the kind of transformation that can happen only to a woman. The politically correct and highly Christianized society of the West, especially in the US, does not like to acknowledge that women have it in them to change in the manner depicted in the film. It is too threatening to their world view. And that is the greatness of this film: it's honesty about men and women, and an in-your-face courage to face the truth. The story is not perfect, but it is the only one I know of that has the courage to state the truth about these things, and on the whole it's merits greatly outweigh it's flaws. See this movie if you want enlightenment, but be prepared to have your boat rocked if you're the kind of person who prefers to live in a fantasy world of niceness and Christian piety.