The Man from Nowhere (2010)

Since Korea is in the news lately, and since I have a soft spot for the Far East cinema, I told myself to change the meridian again (by placing the parallel a bit South than were the general attention is set right now because I don't remember the North to ever have produced something of real interest - in movie terms at least). Especially since "The Man from Nowhere" seemed to be quite attractive after the trailer, thing that's a bit uncommon considering the marketing of the movies from that area.

I could say that what we have here comes to complete, in an Asian version, a "triangle" (because I can't call it a trilogy) chronologically formed from "Leon" in Europe and "Man on Fire" on the American side. In other words, the story of a lonely hardened by life guy that gets to be humanized by the position of protecting a little girl by a bunch of other bad, tough and less lonely (they're a bunch ...) guys. Leaving the sarcasm aside, both "Leon" and "Man on Fire" are top of the list in the directing careers of Luc Besson, respectively Tony Scott (unfortunately for the last will also remain top of the list, and Luc Besson went down a lot since "Leon", but who knows ...). "The Man from Nowhere" or "Ajeossi" as original title is .. how to put it ... "nowhere close to the other two".

For the exact story, the tough and lonely guy in this case is a pawn shop owner, former secret agent retired young after .. let's call it a family tragedy .. to not spoil everything. The little girl, the daughter of a club dancer, is spending her time in the same neighborhood, and lacking friends it keeps pestering our lonely character almost daily. The problems start when her mother interferes with a drug sell. And it doesn't take long until she's caught by the bad guys along with her daughter. And by chance, to give a pretty grim tone to the movie, the bad guys are also in the human organ traffic business, and the two are placed on the potential transplant source list. Somehow, the pawn shop owner gets himself briefly involved in the drug sell went wrong, and - without giving many details - instead of minding his own business after a quick interaction with the bad guys, suddenly grows a conscience and starts tracking them.

The story of the movie might be considered catchy. Maybe it actually is. But for me was also chaotic and hard to believe at certain key points, therefore the sarcasm. The first part is slow, the second is alert. Unfortunately none of them is consistent as rhythm = you have fast pace in the first part on which you have to pay attention and think what just has happened when the action moves in a different direction, and pieces to fill in the second part which although dynamic seem to add unnecessary length to the movie. As a negative aspect I might also say that's a bit of a drama excess in all this, although that's typically Asian. Something which I don't know if it's positive or negative is the "harshness level" or the "grim factor". If some parts wouldn't be that superficially handled maybe it would have made it a "hard" movie. Like that the only thing that's probably augmented is the violence factor. To give a plus, because after all the movie is not bad (and that's why I didn't want to spoil the story details), the technical part is standard Hollywood action movie level - nice cinematography, cool editing, perfect action scenes. No comments. But still it doesn't look enough. Because these, and much besides them, we had both in "Leon" and in "Man on Fire".

Rating: 3 out of 5