ManfromNowhere

The Man from Nowhere (2010)

This Korean movie is about a mysterious and creepy man, Tae-Sik, who runs a pawnshop and the young girl who is his neighbor. The girl’s mother steals some drugs from the local gangsters who then come looking for her. Tae-Sik is drawn into the mess when the mother hides her drugs in his shop. But after giving the drugs over to the gang he sees that the girl is still in danger and goes after the gang. What none of them know is that Tae-Sik is a former Special Forces soldier, so he was the wrong man to mess with. The gang keeps pushing their luck and forcing Tae-Sik to keep killing his way thru the gang. Toss in some really gruesome stuff with kids and illegal organ harvesting and you have a great action movie.

I loved this movie. The story is face paced, but still makes the effort to establish the characters. This is a tightrope that most recent American action movies fail to pull off. The Man from Nowhere not only satisfies my desire for a kick ass action movie with lots of fights and gunplay, but I was also interested in Tae-Sik as a character. Without slowing down the action at all the plot still manages to give us some background into Tae-Sik and why he acts the way he does. But it isn’t just the main character that I thought was written well, all the characters are. This is key because there are a couple of things that happen in the movie, and I won’t spoil them here, that require us to care about the little girl and her mother. Or I suppose at least we should buy into why the Tae-Sik does anyways. The characters are the heart of the movie and drive the action, so without this The Man from Nowhere would have failed.

As much as I dig the characters this one still works as an action movie because of the great fights. The choreography for the action sequences is setup perfectly. This isn’t one of those flicks that use wirework to have actors flying all over the screen, which isn’t anything that I dislike it just wouldn’t have fit here. All the fights here are realistic which for me made the story and the fate of the characters all the more engaging. I’ve already mentioned that there are plenty of fights in this one, but it bears saying again. I don’t think this movie goes more then 10 minutes between some sort of violence or beat down happens. This is the kind of thing that I’m looking for when I watch an action movie and I would imagine you readers do as well, so it is worth mentioning twice.

There isn’t much more that I can say about The Man from Nowhere. That is other then I really recommend this one and encourage everyone to buy themselves a copy and add it to their collection.

3 ½ out of 4

reviewed by John Shatzer