From the
director of The Man From Nowhere
comes another story involving a regret-filled professional killer utilizing his
skills to protect the innocent. South
Korea
The film follows
a professional Korean hit-man named Gon (Jang Dong-gun), who was raised by an
American mafia syndicate to become the best at what he does. When he
accidentally kills a young child during one of his assignments, Gon begins to
question his entire existence. This is only furthered by his latest assignment;
to travel home to South
Korea
As a director,
Lee Jeong-beom embraces the carefully constructed action sequences
effortlessly. There is impressive gunplay, hand-to-hand combat, and some rather
brutal knife-play as well. All of this is expertly handled, but I couldn’t help
but wish that Lee’s screenplay were as exciting as his action sequences. The
problem doesn’t come from the simplicity of the story, because that worked
rather well in The Man from Nowhere.
The real problem comes from a lack of
engaging characters, mostly because we never know enough about them to truly
care. The ‘hit-man with a conscience’ has become more of a caricature than the
‘hooker with a heart of gold’ in South Korean cinema. At the very least, we
need to be given a unique reason to care about Gon, but he ends up
indistinguishable from dozens of other movies about professional killers.
The Blu-ray release includes a
making-of featurette and a commentary track with Lee. There are moments within
the film that the high definition presentation is noticeable, but this package
is far more impressive for the 5.1 digital surround sound. The action is
impressive because of this sound, combined with the choreography and editing.
The cinematography is decent, but usually the action is too fast-paced for it
to be admired.
Entertainment Value:
7.5/10
Quality of
Filmmaking: 7/10
Historical
Significance: 6/10
Special Features: 6.5/10
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