From the Rental Vault: The Man From Nowhere

South Korea's biggest movie of 2010 could have, you might say, come out of nowhere. The Man From Nowhere (in Korean, the original title is Ajeossi), a familiar tale of a violent but damaged Man With a Past who is moved to finally risk life and limb on behalf of someone else, cleaned up at the 2010 Korea Film Awards, taking trophies for Best Actor (Won Bin), Best New Actress (Kim Sae-ron) and several technical categories.

What sets Man From Nowhere apart from the long list of films with pretty much the same story are things like the cinematography, music, Lee Jeong-beom's direction and a fantastic though mostly wordless performance from Won. He plays Cha Tae-sik, a pawn shop owner who has closed himself away from society -- because several years ago, he was a secret military operative whose wife was killed in an assassination attempt on his life. But the curious neighbor child Jeong So-mi insinuates herself into his life with her questions and refusal to be pushed aside. So-mi's mother, Hyo-jeong, is a heroin addict who is mostly neglectful of her daughter. Hyo-jeong's decision to involve herself in a heroin smuggling ring at the club where she dances will have disastrous consequences for her and So-mi when the rival gangs moving the heroin find out. With So-mi the prisoner of a Chinese-based criminal gang that uses children to commit crimes, manufacture drugs and eventually harvest their organs, Cha must re-employ his skills to find her before the gang decides she is no longer useful. The road he takes to do so will be bloody, and even so he may not be in time.

Man From Nowhere sets a moody tone -- So-mi is about the only bright spot in the movie. As befits a story dealing with drug smugglers who enslave children and kidnap people for their organs, it's violent, brutal and counts human life as cheap. Cha focuses on saving So-mi, but even that admirable goal doesn't penetrate his darkened world; he leaves broken, bleeding bodies at nearly every turn in trying to find her. Won, who began his career in South Korea as a model and television actor, shows a broken man for whom each day is a reminder of his wounds and the damage he's suffered. Only as his quest nears its end do we see the grim determination to save So-mi start to override the blank face he's been showing the world since his wife was killed.

Fair warning: It's also a violent and bloody movie, and the criminal element with whom Cha deals are not given to polite expressions and genteel language. If that's not an issue, then it's a high-level piece of neo-noir that shows how a man who thinks he has nothing to give may find he's not as empty as he believed when he decides to risk himself to save an innocent -- and that he might just manage to save himself into the bargain.