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Bad Guy
2001 - South Korea - 102 min. - Feature, Color
| AKA |
Nabbeun Namja (Original Foreign
title) |
| Genre/Type |
Drama, Psychological Drama |
| Keywords |
boyfriend, prostitute/prostitution,
obsession, violence, voyeur, street-gang |
| Themes |
Prostitutes, Dangerous Attraction |
| Tones |
Lurid, Hallucinatory, Disturbing |
| Moods |
Abandon All Hope |
 PLOT
SINOPSIS
Korean director Kim Ki-duk's film begins with Han-ki (Jo
Jae-hyeon), the leader of a gang of street thugs who patrol a Seoul
red light district, becoming infatuated with Sun-hwa (Seo Weon), a
college girl he glimpses in another part of the city. When he tries
to force a kiss on her he is beaten up by her boyfriend, and his
obsession takes an ugly turn. After discovering that she isn't as
innocent as he originally thought, he finds a way to force her into
prostitution on the street where he works. Her painful initiation
becomes fodder for his voyeuristic impulses, and an uneasy, wholly
unconventional relationship develops between them.
REVIEW
Kim
Ki-duk, one of the most original Korean directors to emerge in
the 1990s, makes films that are both brutal and dreamlike. He most
well-known films, such as
The
Isle and
Address Unknown, mix visual poetry with cruel, unflinching
violence. Bad
Guy, his most popular film to date, ups the ante by depicting,
in excruciating detail, the physical and psychological degradation
of a young woman (Seo
Weon) forced into prostitution by the street thug who becomes
infatuated with her. The thug, Han-ki (Jo
Jae-hyeon), is mute. The only language he speaks is violence,
and the film seems to imply that watching Sun-hwa's transformation
from ordinary student to ruined streetwalker is a twisted form of
love.
Kim spares nothing in his depiction of the brutality inflicted
on her. Han-ki watches her endure the abuse of clients and her
madame through a one-way mirror until a kind of Stockholm Syndrome
develops and she comes to need him almost as much as he needs her. Bad
Guy is, needless to say, a disturbing film, made all the more
disturbing by Kim's
refined aesthetic sense, which makes it difficult to dismiss as an
exercise in transgressive naughtiness. Its images stick, and
depending on the viewer, its ending can be read as either uneasily
poignant or outrageously offensive
CAST
Jo Jae-hyeon
Seo Weon
PRODUCTION CREDITS
Kim
Ki-Duk - Director / Screenwriter
Lee Seung-jae - Producer
Park
Ho-Joon - Composer (Music Score) |
