The Man from Nowhere

Simply wow.

A lot of people are put off by foreign language films and I hope those people don't let that stop them from watching this.

It has all the panache of a typical Hollywood film and I have to disagree with some comments that the back-story aspect is lacking compared with the action; my exact thoughts when watching this film were along the lines of "I cannot believe how genuine the character development is". The bond between the two main characters is extremely believable (huge props to the actress who played the young kid). I thought the fact that the film wasn't edited down to the hour-and-half standard probably gave them more room to develop and for an action film, there was much more intelligence than I was expecting to the story.

One of the best films I have seen in a long time.

9/10

The man might be from nowhere but this film could only come from Korea, the land of a million stories of revenge.

But from Korea! A movie haven (and heaven some might argue) for a lot of genre movies. Many of them on the violent side. Which means you should not be easily frightened or squeamish. This has a story and for some it may take a bit too long to get going, but I'd argue it is the right amount of time and it had to take its time to breathe.

To develop and to show us characters and relationships. Of course it is heightened. Of course the movie takes liberties in many areas. But it is well played and well acted. The action set pieces are quite something - and while there are many characters, it is all digestable enough and condensed to a point where it works like a clockwork ...

Let me start off by saying that I was skeptical whether I should watch this movie because of all the comparisons here to US productions. Because while I did enjoy most of the ones named, not enough to want to see a basically South Korean copycat at the theater.

If you fear the same thing: Don't worry! This movie is exactly what you would expect from great Korean cinema, comparable to the likes of "The Chaser", "Memories of Murder" and "A Bittersweet Life". In this movie, there is lots of rather believable tragedy, little kitsch (there is the occasional unsuitable one-liner and the girl sometimes says things that in my opinion are too mature for her age and yank a little too much at the emotional chain - these are basically the things that brought my rating down to 9/10) and a fair amount of graphic violence and realism in the fighting scenes. There are also some wacky characters just like they appear somewhat frequently in east Asian productions but I think they fit in quite nicely despite the otherwise very serious tone.

If one were to compare it to a US production, I would go with e.g. "A History of Violence" because of the serious tone and the realism but still, the overall style is drastically different.

The whole experience is nicely rounded off with a very beautiful score and the only thing I considered negative besides what I already mentioned was that the plot is moving very fast. At various points I was not sure whether I didn't pay enough attention or whether details were left out. Meaning for instance how one character got the information about another character. These connections of information between characters are not always clear in my opinion but it does not really hurt the story and I am sure that it would be clear with a second viewing - something that this movie absolutely deserves.

"This Man" is about as standard plot-wise as action movies get. A lone wolf type takes a little girl under his wing, the kid gets kidnapped, and he ends up having to go through heaps of bad guys in his quest to save the girl.

By all accounts, the movie should have evoked little more than a shrug. After all, anyone who has seen even just a moderate amount of action movies will have seen countless movies with variations of this basic plot. One might think of "Leon" or "Man on Fire" for some closer examples, or movies such as "Taken" in other respects.

What made this movie into my favorite action movie in a long while is the execution of that basic plot. "This Man" manages to create just the right dark, gloomy mood to match the story and all the characters are believable. None of the scenes appear contrived or overly tear-jerker. Another vital aspect for an action movie is, of course, that the action sequences are very well done. The movie is quite graphic, but not gratuitously so or for its own sake such as in many a recent horror movie (the Saw series comes to mind).

I guess the movie could be likened to a good apple pie - certainly nothing revolutionary, in fact quite the staple of its genre, but who would want to turn down a really good apple pie with quality ingredients?