The Man from Nowhere (Lee Jeong-beom, 2010)
No fake beards to speak of, but still a "haircut movie" par excellence, where every major character reveals himself through his hair style (see the heavy with the moddish cut above, in the midst of torturing a woman with—yes!—a hairdryer), where the camera intermittently lingers on women's hair, and where, of course, the protagonist indicates his resolve by finally chopping off his shaggy mane.
5 comments:
Yeah, but is it a good (haircut) movie or a bad (haircut) movie?
Pretty good, and somewhat Tobackish, in that it seems to inhabit a cartoony, sad, violent universe shaped by an unusual personal mythology (what Dave Kehr, writing on Fingers, called "strange, suggestive ideas and deep feelings that are never made comprehensible for the audience").
That's a really nice way of putting it.
I like the idea of burying "an unusual personal mythology" deep within what might otherwise have been a pretty standard actioner.
To me the film plays like a Luc Besson scenario directed somewhere between the exuberant genre fare of old-school John Woo and current Johnnie To and the darker Korean crime thrillers with more serious intentions by the likes of Park Chan Wook, Kim Jee Woon and Bong Joon Ho.
Excuse me, sir? You seem to have dropped some names. Would you like me to pick them up for you?
Speaking on a wholly robotic technical level, I found the film rather sloppy storywise. Plot points and characters seemed to be introduced without really being fully as utilized as I would have wished.
Also, I wonder if Kim Hee-won's character knew that you can still drive on flat tires.
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