Showing posts with label kim jee-woon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label kim jee-woon. Show all posts

Sunday, October 23, 2022

Top 40 Korean Horror Films


By Pierce Conran

Korean horror isn't what it used to be. But it was never any one thing to begin with.

For many years it was unfairly seen as the poor cousin of J-horror in neighbouring Japan, but K-horror, as it has come to be known, has roots stretching back 60 years. Influenced by local folklore and urban legends and shaped by a society that teeters along sharp divides between tradition and modernity, and shamanism and christianity, it has continually evolved during that time.

Filmmakers like Lee Man-hee and Lee Yong-min were jolting audiences all the way back in the early 1960s and local folklore gave us the templates for the Korean horror films of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, whether through mythical creatures like the Gumiho (aka 'Nine-Tailed Fox') or folk tales like 'A Tale of Two Sisters'. 

Saturday, August 19, 2017

News: Fox Resuscitates A BITTERSWEET LIFE Remake with Michael B. Jordan


By Pierce Conran

Stop me if you think you've heard this one before but a remake of A Bittersweet Life is reportedly coming together at 20th Century Fox with Michael B. Jordan taking on Lee Byung-hun's classic gangster role and former animation director Jennifer Yuh Nelson filling Kim Jee-woon's shoes in what is tipped to be a franchise-starter.

Friday, December 30, 2016

Top 15 Korean Films of 2016


By Pierce Conran

While 2016 has a been a difficult year in many regards, one area where it has excelled has been Korean cinema. With big auteurs returning with some of their best work, younger filmmakers making their presence felt and another new batch of promising indies, the industry has put out its best crop of films in years.

Tuesday, January 26, 2016

27 Most Anticipated Korean Films of 2016



By Pierce Conran

More so than usual, it took a long time to compile this year's 'most anticipated Korean films' list for the simple reason that there's so much on the horizon. Some of Korea's master directors return, following their US debuts, and there are many tantalizing combinations of talent and concept waiting in the wings.

Wednesday, July 10, 2013

Revenge Week: Seeing Devils - Violence and Revenge in Kim Jee-woon’s I Saw the Devil (Part II)


Part of MKC's Revenge Week (July 8-14, 2013).

By David Bell

Released the same year, Jang’s Bedevilled offers a more delicate approach. Hae-won, an unsympathetic Seoul bank-worker, is forced to take time off after aggressive behaviour towards a colleague and visits her childhood friend Bok-nam on the fictional island of Moo-do. Appalled by the mannerisms and cleanliness of the farming islanders, she passively bears witness to their horrific treatment of Bok-nam and murder, and denial thereof to (again) useless police, of Bok-nam’s daughter. Frustratingly, Jang persistently plays with our expectation to see Hae-won emerge from her clean middle-class apathy and intervene in Bok-nam’s suffering under the abject, conventionally Othered, islanders. But just as she previously failed to act after witnessing Bok-nam’s gang rape as a teenager by those same men as youths, Hae-won, indifferent, arranges her return to Seoul. In turn, Bok-nam’s manic massacre of the islanders takes on a decidedly, and cleverly achieved, tone of despair. Had Hae-won intervened, as her need for redemption combined with the wretched islanders’ need of punishment appeared to signpost she would, the ensuing carnage might have taken a more traditionally cathartic mode – one more in keeping with the violence performed in I Saw the Devil.

Tuesday, July 9, 2013

Revenge Week: Seeing Devils - Violence and Revenge in Kim Jee-woon’s I Saw the Devil (Part I)


Part of MKC's Revenge Week (July 8-14, 2013). 

By David Bell

Spectacles of violence are an important aspect of modern cinema. At times they shock and appal us, at others they attract and excite. Often they are the most memorable moments of a film. To mention Park Chan-wook’s Oldboy (2003) is to remind those, who have seen it, instantly of a man slicing off his own tongue. Our uneasy relationship to screen violence can be traced from the very genesis of cinema. Thomas Edison’s 1903 film Electrocuting an Elephant showed simply that – a scene of violence, the public electrocution of an elephant. That same year Edwin S. Porter took steps with The Great Train Robbery to bring the two cinematic aspects of narrative and violence effortlessly together. Today, spectacles of violence are regularly where cinema is found at its most visceral; where the reality of our corporeal bodies is brought into line with those of the characters on screen. In some instances, it can be deeply uncomfortable; in others, massively pleasurable.

Wednesday, December 12, 2012

KCN: New Projects from Park Chan-wook, Kim Jee-woon and Hong Sang-soo (12/06-12/12, 2012)

Lots of new projects or details of upcoming films announced this week, including the latest on Park Chan-wook, Hong Sang-soo and Kim Jee-woon's cinematic endeavors. The first teaser for Ryoo Seung-wan hotly anticipated spy thriller The Berlin File was also released today.

KOREAN CINEMA NEWS

Kim Jee-woon Plans Live Action Jin Roh: The Wolf Brigade
Get ready for something spectacular. Korea's Kim Jee-woon - soon to make his English language debut with Arnold Schwarzenegger starring The Last Stand - has big plans for his next Korean film and it's something that should leave anime fans very, very happy. (Twitch, December 11, 2012)

Director Hong Sangsoo’s Next Film Gets 19 Rating
Director Hong Sangsoo’s next film, Nobody’s Daughter Haewon, was given the 19 or above rating on December 6. The film finished shooting this past spring and is in the post production stage, awaiting a release date. The film stars Lee Sun-kyun who appeared in Hong Lost in the Mountains and Oki’s Movie. This will be the actor’s third collaboration with Hong. (KoBiz, December 11, 2012)

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

KCN: A Bittersweet Life Gets US Remake, Pieta Sales and a Boatload of Posters (09/20-09/26, 2012)

It's been a very busy week here in Korea as I'm switching jobs, moving, preparing for Busan and have lost my phone so apologies for the slower pace of articles and this abbreviated version of Korean Cinema News. 


KOREAN CINEMA NEWS

A Bittersweet Life to Be Remade, Albert Hughes Takes the Reigns
One half of the directing duo behing Menace II Society, From Hell and The Book of Eli, Albert Hughes, is set to direct a fast-tracked remake of the seminal Korean gangster film A Bittersweet Life. Anthony Peckham, recently behind Invictusand Sherlock Holmes, has been brought in to polish the script. No word yet on cast or possible release date.

There's been a awful lot of news surrounding Korean films being remade in Hollywood or Korean directors making their mark in Tinseltown lately but this is one development I can't get excited about. I'm generally not a fan of foreign films being remade (much less Korean ones) so I'm not one of the people who is excited for Spike Lee's take on Oldboy. However, I do recognize the potential that such an original premise has in a new market. The same goes for the upcoming remake of Castaway on the Moon, one of the very best films made in the last decade. Last I heard, Mark Waters (of Mr. Popper's Penguins fame) was at the helm, and while I don't think that'll amount to much I do concede that it is property with a fantastic premise, ripe for the remake treatment.

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Korean Cinema News (07/05-07/11, 2012)

Plenty of news this week so dig in! PiFan is just around the corner by the way, get started next Thursday!

PIFAN


Check out the following previews for this year's PiFan, written by myself and James Marsh over on Twitch:

PiFan 2012 Preview Part 3: Vision Express 
PiFan 2012 Preview Part 4: Strange Homage, Forbidden Zone & More

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

NYAFF 2012: Doomsday Book (인류멸망보고서, In-lyoo-myeol-mang-bo-go-seo) 2012


Part of MKC's coverage of the 11th New York Asian Film Festival.

(by Peter Gutiérrez)

No doubt about it: it’s definitely a cliché to remark on how anthology films can be uneven – in fact, it’s probably also a cliché at this point to point out how commonplace such an observation is. Yet although this assessment applies to Doomsday Book, which gets its North American premiere Wednesday evening at NYAFF, the film is also refreshing in that I could see different viewers holding disparate ideas as to which are the stronger and weaker entries in this ambitious, three-part science-fiction extravaganza.

The opening story, “A Brave New World,” takes what seems like a well-worn zombie formula and, in the hands of Antarctic Journal’s Yim Pil-Sung,  fashions one of those optimal mixtures of the audaciously dark and the goofily humorous that can make Korean genre cinema so wonderful. That’s not to say that Yim’s goals are purely pulply, its ironical tone and light intellectualism are evident from the title. Taking its cue less from Shakespeare, or Huxley, and more from the Bible, this segment looks terrific and boasts some solid storytelling, so you’ll be forgiven for not noticing its more highbrow aspirations. Like Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion, which played for both more laughs and more horror, “A Brave New World” is so adept at grabbing and holding your attention that you may be a bit disappointed when it seems satisfied in leading you into romance (!) territory and leaving you there.

Saturday, December 10, 2011

Jopok Week: Masculinity and Beauty in A Bittersweet Life and The Man From Nowhere – Part II

Questions of Masculinity and Beauty in the Jopok Films A Bittersweet Life (2005) and The Man From Nowhere (2010)


(contd.)

A Bittersweet Life

The question of who dies or survives is not a superficial question.  For Sun-woo, ultimately he is the author of the circle in which he becomes ensnared.  This truth is reflective of A Bittersweet Life’s very insular world.  The gangsters in this film hardly interact with the daytime, if they can help it; whatever dealings with the international world that the criminal organisation may have the film does not show or mention.  The irony is that Sun-woo could not help it:  Sun-woo is assigned to look after his boss’ much younger girlfriend Hee-soo for several days while he is away because he is suspicious of her having a boyfriend.  Like a rope that has reached its breaking point, Sun-woo's meeting with Hee-soo unravels the strands of loyalty and honour that had sustained his good standing with his boss.  After tasting a different rhythm and colour of life by accompanying Hee-soo in her day-to-day activities as a student, Sun-woo makes the decision to not kill Hee-soo and her boyfriend.  But what is a gesture of goodwill in the sweet light of day is a death wish in the underground shadows of noir.

The themes of loyalty, betrayal, and revenge; the narrative development of a woman triggering the protagonist's “downfall”; and the jungle of marginalised characters encountered to get to the boss are all there.  But Kim revels in playing with these conventions to bend the jopok under his spell.  One of the film’s distinct characteristics is the segment that bridges Sun-woo’s escape from his boss’ henchmen and his last killing spree.  In this unexpected, comical sequence, which could be a short film unto itself, Sun-woo meets a Laurel and Hardy-like pair of gunrunners and has a great seated showdown with their boss.  It is a bold move because this sequence basically brings to a standstill the dramatic action of revenge, but it showcases Kim’s distinct perspective of things and references the great peculiarity of his previous films like The Quiet Family (1998) and The Foul King (2000).  In this way, Kim demonstrates an incredible confidence in his interpretation of noir as a narrative template as well as visual pleasure.  From a bloody standoff on an ice rink, a muddy buried-alive punishment that turns into a veritable resurrection, the visual motif of lamps and turning on/off lights as a more literal illustration of noir lighting and mise en scène, to the final meeting with his boss at the Melville-esque lounge with the words la dolce vita between them in the background in all its irony, A Bittersweet Life is full of cool, masculine attitude and mood.



The Man From Nowhere

The Man From Nowhere is much more diversified in terms of the scope of criminal activities with which one must contend.  It brings together the Chinese mafia, a Thai assassin, child trafficking, drug trafficking, and organ harvesting to create the formidable criminal web in which pawnshop owner Tae-shik unwittingly finds himself through his acquaintance with a little girl, So-mi, who lives in the same apartment complex as him.  Unlike Sun-woo in A Bittersweet Life, Tae-shik has a backstory – and a tragic family one at that – which informs his conscious reaction to the things that happen to him and the things he witnesses with regards to So-mi.  Even if his actions yield unexpected results, his objective to rescue So-mi never falters.  That he ends up having to confront a big-time criminal organisation and put a stop to their illegal activities in the process is ultimately secondary but convenient and dramatic in a narrative sense.

How Tae-shik gets embroiled in the criminal organisation run by brothers Man-seok and Jong-seok is complicated.  While some regard this complexity as a flaw, it actually reveals the film’s smartness in terms of keeping up with these complex, globalised criminal times.  The parallel strands of Tae-shik finding more about Man-seok and Jong-seok’s extensive criminal operations and the police finding more about Tae-shik’s international special agent background reflect the reality of a more connected, complicated, diverse world.  Lee’s desire to reflect this multilayered reality may also help to explain his decision to have Tae-shik’s most electrifying fights be against Ramrowan, the Thai assassin who works for Man-seok and Jong-seok, instead of the brothers themselves.  Aside from the splendid choreography, the most striking detail about their confrontations is the surprising absence of extra-diegetic music.  The sequence that consists of the silence of their first fight in a bathroom and the pulsating sounds of the dance floor as they stand and face each other as if to initiate a duel, despite the crowd of people dancing obliviously around them, is an effective example of visual and aural contrast and also foreshadows Tae-shik and Ramrowan’s even more vigorous knife fight towards the end.  At the same time, Tae-shik and Ramrowan’s confrontations rise above the story to occupy a whole other dimension unto itself, which accounts for the film’s stylisation.  In this sense, unlike his colleagues, Ramrowan serves less to drive the plot than to affirm and spectacularise Tae-shik’s character.  Ultimately, nothing topples Tae-shik’s coolness and moral sense of self, which affirm each other throughout the film: so guarded of his past, but it tempers his actions in the present.



Angels with Dirty, Pretty Faces

David Thomson writes of Alain Delon in Le samouraï, “[T]he enigmatic angel of French film, only thirty-two in 1967, and nearly feminine.  Yet so earnest and immaculate as to be thought lethal or potent.”  This description of Delon’s taciturn, schizophrenic assassin in Le samouraï is perhaps not the first image of a killer that comes immediately to mind. It certainly does not apply to the majority of assassins or gangsters in cinema, past or present.  In fact, it applies only very rarely.  Not even Ryan Gosling in Drive (2011, Nicholas Winding Refn) fits this bill, regardless of the frequent comparisons made between this film and Melville’s work; marvelous attempt, but not quite.  
Only Louis Koo in Election 2 (2006, Johnnie To) – stunning, menacing, and intensely still all at the same time – is a worthy match.  In contemporary Korean cinema, Lee Byung-hun and Won Bin.

Fans and critics alike frequently discuss these actors’ attractiveness, in terms similar to the ones that Thomson uses above to describe Delon:  “feminine,” “earnest,” “immaculate.”  Any filmmaker who casts these actors must somehow take into account their attractiveness and proceed accordingly, so that part of the interest in these actors in a jopok film – with all of its grimy, sordid violence – consists in seeing how the film uses their attractiveness:  is it downplayed, made more conspicuous?  For the actor, such as Delon, these gangster/noir films are a way to overcome or make rough one’s attractiveness and to be taken seriously as a dramatic actor.


For A Bittersweet Life, Lee Byung-hun’s looks were crucial for Kim Ji-woon.  In a 2009 master class, Kim elaborated on his choice of Lee to play Sun-woo:  “One of the reasons I cast him was that in French noir, the most [well-known] protagonist was Alain Delon.  I thought that Lee Byung-hun is the Korean actor who most resembles him.  Alain Delon doesn't have a lot of dialogue, either.  I worked it in because I thought he was the one who could bring the eyes and aura of Alain Delon.”  Accordingly, Kim shot Lee in close-ups and extreme close-ups throughout the film to express the gamut of overwhelming emotion that Sun-woo must go through without resorting to dialogue.  In turn, Lee brings the eyes, aura, and walk that recall the steely coolness of Delon.  Lee's walk alone conveys a myriad of things, such as in the opening scene where he descends from the sky lounge to the underground bar – the camera closely following from behind – for the first fight scene.  Or in the scene where Sun-woo walks towards Hee-soo to take her home – the camera also closely behind – and then does a quick about-face when he sees her male friend get there before him. The performance is wordless, but Lee gets the giddiness of a schoolboy in love as well as the shyness, vulnerability, and embarrassment that go with it.

For The Man From Nowhere, Lee Jeong-beom also made symbolic use of Won Bin’s pretty boy looks.  Lee speaks of casting Won Bin in a 2011 interview, “In the beginning I had an older character in mind.  But Won's face drew me to him even more.  He has a beautiful face, but when he is not speaking his face is cold.  For example, in the scenes with the child his youthful side would show, while in the action scenes his face grew colder.”  Lee, like Melville with Delon, drew amply from and enhanced the mysterious allure of Won Bin walking quietly but determinedly, looking, and listening intently, or simply standing still in order to create the emotion and mood of scenes.  The film introduces Tae-shik in such a way, which makes the fight scenes and aggressive dialogue all the more impactful.  Ultimately, why The Man From Nowhere works despite its borrowings of kidnapping, busting a drug/trafficking ring, and an ex-special agent rekindling his deadly training plots is due largely to the charismatic tension between the jopok genre and Won Bin’s pretty boy-ness.  The first part of the film relies heavily on this tension, with Won Bin’s face half covered by his hair, while the rest of the film and his subsequent haircut are the consequences of the full-on collision between Won Bin and the ultra-violent, ultra masculine world of jopok.


But what distinguishes Lee Byung-hun and Won Bin from Delon are the “manly tears,” so prevalent in South Korean films, jopok films included.  In both A Bittersweet Life and The Man From Nowhere, Lee and Won each have their moment of manly tears, something that would never happen to Delon’s characters.  What are the roots of this motif (see Pierce Conran’s previous post on MKC)?  Perhaps it goes back to the issue of reviving not just the screen image of Korean masculinity but a particular one that taps into Korean cinema’s history of melodrama and aestheticises masculinity and emotion simultaneously.

Part I of Masculinity and Beauty in A Bittersweet Life and The Man From Nowhere


Rowena Santos Aquino recently obtained her doctorate degree in Cinema and Media Studies.  She is a contributing writer to Asia Pacific Arts.  She has also contributed to other online outlets, such as Midnight Eye and Red Feather, and to print journals, including Transnational Cinemas and Asian Cinema.  She also loves football.  She can be found musing about film and football on her twitter page.


Reviews and features on Korean film appear regularly on Modern Korean Cinema.  For film news, external reviews, and box office analysis, take a look at the Korean Box Office UpdateKorean Cinema News and the Weekly Review Round-up, which appear weekly on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings (GMT+1).

To keep up with the best in Korean film you can sign up to our RSS Feed, like us on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter.

Thursday, December 8, 2011

Jopok Week: Masculinity and Beauty in A Bittersweet Life and The Man From Nowhere – Part I

Questions of Masculinity and Beauty in the Jopok Films A Bittersweet Life (2005) and The Man From Nowhere (2010)

By Rowena Santos Aquino


The Jopok Film

In June 1990, Im Kwon-taek released the first film of what would become The General’s Son series (1990-1992).  The General’s Son singlehandedly revived the jopok, or organised crime, film in South Korean cinema, following a drought that stretched back to the 1970s and early 1980s.  Significantly, in October 1990 the South Korean government declared war on organised crime and proceeded to conduct raids on various criminal organisations and arrest leaders of the principally family-led businesses throughout the country.  Though government raids and arrests occurred following the release of The General’s Son, it is interesting to imagine that headlines about real-life jopok members fed into the ongoing interest in the film and the rest of the series, and contributed to making it a box-office hit.  One need only recall the classic Hollywood gangster triptych of Little Caesar (1930, Mervyn LeRoy), The Public Enemy (1931, William A. Wellman), and Scarface (1932, Howard Hawks) to think of a scenario of crime headlines, film production, and the box-office informing each other in such a way.

Chow Yun-fat in The Killer (1989)

According to Jinsoo An, more immediately in the mind of director Im Kwon-taek in making The General’s Son series was the idea of reviving the screen image of Korean masculinity.  This idea was partly triggered by the highly popular and influential 1980s and 1990s Hong Kong action and Triad films – courtesy of filmmakers John Woo, Johnnie To, and Ringo Lam, among others – which began to be distributed in South Korea at the time.  Looming large above all other idealised images of cool, handsome, and individualistic masculinity was Chow Yun-fat.  With Chow’s height and tragic-manic persona in Woo’s films, he literally and metaphorically loomed over his male costars such as Leslie Cheung and Tony Leung.

Of course, the interesting detail is that John Woo modeled Chow Yun-fat’s walk, dress, and overall performance after the French actor Alain Delon and the crime noir films he did with Jean-Pierre Melville, especially Le samouraï (1967).  In turn, Melville was inspired by Alan Ladd’s portrayal of an assassin in the Hollywood film This Gun For Hire (1942, Frank Tuttle) for Le samouraï.  In these two films, Ladd and Delon personify assassins whose otherworldly physical beauty creates a compelling tension with their criminal profession and stoicism in the face of killing and death.

Alain Delon in Le samouraï (1967)

But what began partly as a way to distinguish Korean crime action films and images of masculinity from those found in Hong Kong films (flavoured with Melville-Delon) has become a full-fledged successful, dynamic, and self-sustaining genre in its own right in contemporary South Korean cinema.  Between 1990 and 2005, South Korean cinema saw a plethora of jopok films (e.g. Beat [1997, Kim Sung-su], Nowhere To Hide [1999, Lee Myung-se]), gangster comedies (e.g. No. 3 [1997, Song Neung-han], My Wife is a Gangster series [2001-06], Marrying the Mafia series [2002-06]), and other films that appropriated gangster tropes for their own purposes (e.g. Hoodlum Lessons [1996, Kim Sang-jin]).


Jopok Evolution

If by 2005 South Korean cinema had reached a jopok saturation point, it is also the point of departure for another phase in jopok evolution.  Films such as A Dirty Carnival (2006, Yoo Ha), The Show Must Go On (2007, Han Jae-rim), Rough Cut (2008, Jang Hun), and Breathless (2009, Yang Ik-jun) run through the usual gamut of jopok themes of duty vs. personal desire and the endless cycle of violence, but they also toy with the jopok genre in a marvelous way and present a different level of grittiness, self-reflection, and auteur expression over and above commercial impulses.  A Dirty Carnival and Rough Cut are particularly interesting for having the component of a film-within-the-film.  Rough Cut is especially superb for its commentary on the desire for the realism of violence and the gangster as a film fetish to be admired and feared at the same time by having an actual gangster play opposite an actor in a gangster film.  The very good looks of lead actors Jo In-seong and So Ji-seob in A Dirty Carnival and Rough Cut may not be absolutely crucial to the trope of admiration and fear of the gangster, but they certainly factor into it and reference that tension between beauty and violence with Ladd, Delon, and Chow.

So Ji-sub in Rough Cut  (2008)

In the context of this Ladd-Delon-Chow loner lineage and idea of cool, handsome, and individualistic masculinity, arguably the most existential interpretation thus far is Kim Ji-woon’s 2005 film A Bittersweet Life, while the most literal interpretation has to be Lee Jeong-beom’s 2010 film The Man From Nowhere.

A Bittersweet Life explicitly takes the jopok film to the level of noir, that is, a level of stylisation of lighting, place, film references, (masculine) interiority, and narrative trajectory.  The distinction between the gangster film and noir comes from director Kim himself.  Kim said in a master class on A Bittersweet Life back in 2009, “How I thought of noir was that it's a genre that expresses a gangster movie in a more aesthetic way.  I think that gangster movies and film noir have to be distinguished [and] separate.”  A Bittersweet Life is a stylistic exploration of one’s place in the world at a given time, one’s actions, one’s emotions that fuel or thwart such actions, and the consequences of in/action through the proverbial loner and revenge scheme within the criminal underworld.

Lee Byung-hun in A Bittersweet Life (2005)

Such a description also applies, though to a lesser degree, to The Man From Nowhere (2010).  It is stylistic in its own way and actually opens up the revenge scheme to reflect the globalised, diversified world in which criminals and their organisations must now work.  The differences in the ways in which these two films stylistically explore one’s place in the jopok world are much more marked than the similarities.  For one thing, the level of noir elements in A Bittersweet Life is much more pronounced than in The Man From Nowhere, which factor into the nature of each film’s narrative and conclusion.  In A Bittersweet Life, the existential malaise of the lone anti-hero is explicit and falls outside of any moral context.  Sun-woo (Lee Byung-hun) makes the conscious decision of not killing his boss’ girlfriend and clandestine boyfriend and pays for it.  To a tee he follows the protocol of revenge to its inevitable end after his boss and cohorts beat him to a pulp.  In The Man From Nowhere, the existential malaise is also palpable but fitted out more along moral/ethical lines as Tae-shik (Won Bin) is forced to come out of his shell and into contact with a crime organisation to find a kidnapped young girl.  While A Bittersweet Life follows a man bent on revenge against his own boss and cohorts and carried away by internal (il)logic that he himself does not question, The Man From Nowhere is about a man who gets haphazardly involved in a rescue and must contend with a host of external malicious forces.  While the narrative trigger for Sun-woo’s revenge in A Bittersweet Life is romantic, the impetus for Tae-shik in The Man From Nowhere is more familial through the young girl.  Perhaps the most significant existentialist difference between these two films is the death and survival of the protagonist.  Take a wild guess as to who dies or survives.

Won Bin in The Man From Nowhere (2010)

Despite, or because of, these differences, these two films make for an interesting study of comparison, especially with regards to their respective lead actors and how the films narrativise and deconstruct their masculine beauty.  Before focusing on Lee Byung-hun and Won Bin, some more general comments on the two films are in order.

Part II of Masculinity and Beauty in A Bittersweet Life and The Man From Nowhere


Rowena Santos Aquino recently obtained her doctorate degree in Cinema and Media Studies.  She is a contributing writer to Asia Pacific Arts.  She has also contributed to other online outlets, such as Midnight Eye and Red Feather, and to print journals, including Transnational Cinemas and Asian Cinema.  She also loves football.  She can be found musing about film and football on her twitter page.


Reviews and features on Korean film appear regularly on Modern Korean Cinema.  For film news, external reviews, and box office analysis, take a look at the Korean Box Office UpdateKorean Cinema News and the Weekly Review Round-up, which appear weekly on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings (GMT+1).

To keep up with the best in Korean film you can sign up to our RSS Feed, like us on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter.