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Title: Bad Guy (2001)
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| Cast overview: | |||
| Jae-Hyun Cho | ... | Han-ki (as Jae-hyeon Jo) | |
 |
Won Seo | ... | Sun-hwa |
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Yun-tae Kim | ... | Yun-tae |
| Duk-moon Choi | ... | Myeong-su (as Duek-mun Choi) | |
|
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Yoon-young Choi | ... | Hyun-ja |
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Yoo-jin Shin | ... | Min-jung |
| Kim Jeong-yeong | ... | Eun-hye (as Jung-young Kim) | |
| Min Namkoong | ... | Hyun-su (as Gung-Min Nam) | |
In busy downtown Seoul, a thuggish young man notices a fresh-faced college student who sits on a bench. He stares then sits next to her. She looks at him as if he's vermin, rises and walks to another bench. He sits staring. Her boyfriend arrives, she points to the stranger, the boyfriend shrugs and puts his arm around her to walk away. The stranger starts to leave as well, turns, goes to them, takes her face firmly in his hands and kisses her long and hard. The boyfriend tries unsuccessfully to break them apart, then soldiers beat the stranger. She demands an apology. He is silent. She slaps him and spits on him. They leave. The next day, he sets out to ruin her. How can this end? Written by <jhailey@hotmail.com>
With the work of South Korean filmmaker Kim Ki-Duk, the viewer has to accept some very fundamental "flaws" that inherently seem to be a part of his work in a practical sense. The production values are always cheap, the soundtrack music is always tacky, the acting is never more than at the most basic level, there are continuity errors... in a word, his films always seem low budget and as if everything were shot in one take. Also he has almost an insistence on breaching realism and lapsing into his own vague allegory. His characters never follow any kind of real internal logic, but rather act according to the scenario he conceives. All of these factors amount to the reason I don't think I will ever be able to consider any of his films true masterpieces.
That said, in return for accepting these inherent flaws, the viewer is rewarded with a candid, unadulterated look into the creative mind of a very interesting person. Kim Ki-Duk's vision is relentlessly idiosyncratic, but very consistent and pure. Watching his films, you gain direct access into his thoughts. This is not film-making by committee, this is "auteurism" in the truest sense. That in and of itself is such a rarity that his films are worth seeing for this reason alone. And this film, "Bad Guy", is probably the purest, most definitive example of Kim Ki-Duk's vision. All the preoccupations that manifest in his other work are here: The mute, inexpressive protagonist, the seeming obsession with prostitution and the degradation of women in general, and also the director's tendency to eventually lead his characters into an incomprehensible fantasy world. Whether or not the viewer is willing to accept these illogical flights of fancy is purely a matter of taste, but personally i find his work fascinating solely because it is so stubbornly idiosyncratic and fueled by a remarkably pure sense of creative expression.