Won Bin puts two in your melon

By Zhao Kun

Over the years Korean movie stars have developed their own ways of acting. Any film goers from different cultures often find an excessive dose of melodrama, given their high-pitched tones that sound like wrangles and over-the-top facial expressions that would be more suitable for the theater.

Now the 2010 box-office champion in Korea The Man from Nowhere attempts to smash that mentality and allows lead actor Won Bin to give his role a different portrayal, even though the supporting cast still take the usual approach.

The movie's protagonist Cha Tae-shik (Won Bin) lives a reclusive life running a pawn shop in a hidden alley in Seoul. Few people know that he is an ex-special agent and he decides to shut himself off from the outside world after a mafia member murders his pregnant wife.

Refusing any contact with humanity, he takes notice of a little girl So-mi who lives upstairs and has a drug-addicted mother.

But their nascent friendship soon goes through a series of tests when So-mi's mother gets involved in a drug deal and is kidnapped by thugs with So-mi also taken captive. From this point on, viewers begin to watch the bloody and intense action sequence during Tae-shik's long and dangerous chase to rescue his only friend.

Starting off his career as a heartthrob in TV soap operas, Won Bin shows acting of great depth in this movie and presents masterly kungfu skills often seen in Donnie Yen's action blockbusters. But trademarked as a good-looking showbiz idol, Won Bin cannot but stay cool and stylish despite trying to keep everyone around at a distance - he lives in a shabby neighborhood but dresses up every day in a customized black suit; he grows his hair long but keeps it in the shape of a pop rocker's.

In one scene, he has a haircut with an electric shaver but the final hairdo is what one could only get at Tony & Guy for a few hundred kuai: no wonder in the barber's shops in Beijing Korean hairdressers are entitled to charge higher fees.

Nevertheless the movie becomes more of a fashion flick and lacks sincerity and realistic rendering.

Directed by Lee Jeong-beom, the gangster thriller contains a bit of John Woo, blending action with art house. The young director exhibits his philosophy that violence can overrule violence as the lead can kill any villain brutally without blinking.

But the movie at the same time reveals his struggle with camera placement as well as his inconsistent cinematography. In spite of that, one scene could absolutely be excerpted for the film academy textbook:  Cha runs through a hallway, breaks through a glass window, and jumps to the street below, with the camera following closely behind his back all along the way.

But the question remains why he has to try so hard to save a next door neighbor since the movie fails to convince that the special bond is solid enough to prompt a daredevil rescue.

On my 1-to-10 movie scale, I give The Man from Nowhere an action-packed but insincere and inconsistent SEVEN.