One Man Wrecking Crew
Won Bin is ex-special agent CHA Tae-shik and he keeps to himself running a small pawn shop in a rough town. His neighbor is a woman who is mixed up with drugs who has no interest in caring for her daughter, So-mi. Tae-shik is almost as apt to turn a cold shoulder to the lonely girl as well; it’s clear that he is either a bad guy or someone who has suffered great tragedy earlier in his life.
Early on in the film, some drugs from a chinese drug dealer get put into a bag that was traded into Tae-shik’s pawnshop. When some thugs come to retrieve it, Tae-shik reveals some of his outstanding martial arts prowess. So-mi gets kidnapped though, and suddenly Tae-shik breaks out of his sullen way of life and takes on the drug dealers head on to save her and her mother.
Meanwhile, the Korean DEA is on the case and tracking down several major drug dealers and Tae-shik. It’s clear that Tae-shik is on their side, although in that reluctant hero sort of way where he is really taking out the bad guys for his own personal gains. Watching him do so is a fun ride — this movie is very well directed and acted, and thoroughly entertaining throughout because of it. The camera angles are sharp and avoid gimmicks that are often used in action films. The blend of drama, suspense, subtle comic relief, action, and even a bit of horror/thriller, are potent and it all comes together beautifully. From a raw action perspective, the choreographer is great and features quite a bit of knife fighting, more than I have seen in any recent movie. The hand to hand combat is fast paced and bone crushing, and thankfully, no bad music is involved.
The presentation quality of The Man From Nowhere on Blu-ray is impressive. From an art direction point of view there is a good variety of scenes and plenty of colors and textures that are represented beautifully on this Blu-ray. I didn’t notice any technical issues either, so this is a really smooth HD transfer. The audio package didn’t disappoint either; Korean 5.1 is the main audio track with support for English dub and subtitles.
Extra features include the teaser trailer and full length trailer, both in SD. A six minute ‘highlight’ feature is also included, in SD, but it seemed strange as it literally just shows clips from the movie. The eighteen minute or so ‘making of’ feature, while in SD, is quite entertaining and very candid. You will get to see lots of production footage and some cast interviews, too.
The Man From Nowhere came outta nowhere for me, but I’m sure glad it did; great film.
To the summary…