The Man From Nowhere (2010)
Korean action movie
Director: Jeong-beom Lee
Writer: Jeong-beom Lee
Starring: Bin Won, Thanayong Wongtrakul, and Sae-ron Kim
Summary borrowed from IMDB: A quiet pawnshop keeper with a violent past takes on a drug- and organ trafficking ring in hope of saving the child who is his only friend.
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Okay, so this is one of those great action movies that basically has everything. Movies that give me a similar vibe: The Professional, The Crow (more the TV show than the movie, actually)
The story begins with a pawnshop owner that is kind of nice to a young girl, and in return she keeps coming around. Her mother is a junkie and a thief, and the girl is poor and there’s always people teasing her and thinking she’s trash, so she gets into fights or causes trouble and things. Her feelings for the pawn shop owner have her saying that he’s her father when she gets into trouble in the hopes that he will save her. He does not, just walking off.
There’s a whole tragic backstory about his past, and while he’s dealing with that, the junkie mom gets into trouble when she helps steal from the wrong people. The pawnshop guy shows up in his fancy clothes in time to find out that the girl and her mother have been taken by dangerous criminals — men neck deep in guns, drugs, prostitution, and murder.
And that’s when things blow up into action as the pawnshop guy races to save the girl, or if he can’t do that, at the very least avenger her.
He has a secret past and is one dangerous mofo. This is a straight up action thriller, with a gritty taste and feel. There’s prostitution, sex, language, violence (VIOLENCE!), organ farming, slavery, child labor, everything. All the bad things in the world are in this movie, and then there’s a guy that just wants to find a little girl, and to that end he probably changes a ton of lives forever.
And in the end, he does not shirk away from what he’s done and accepts whatever punishment is his due. Because this wasn’t a story about him, not really. This is a story about the man he used to be, the man he wants to be, and the girl he simply has to save.
Rating: 5
Watch it on Netflix or Hulu.
