The Man From Nowhere: An Action Movie to Answer My Prayers

God, I love a good serious-faced kid actress (Kim Sae-ron) who's got a drug-addicted mom (Kim Hyo-seo) who calls her "garbage" when she's not working as a stripper or getting slapped around by her no-good boyfriend/pimp. And God, I love an emotionally numb but physically sexy assassin (Won Bin) who develops a fondness for little, helpless waifs without ever losing his ability to disarm and maim a whole gang of thugs even if they're equipped with knives, pipes and guns and he's got nothing but his flying fists and feet. I just love him! Especially, when he stands shirtless in front of a mirror and gives himself a stylish haircut with a bare razor blade and a handy electronic clipper that just happened to be lying around. And while I'm at it God, I also love a skinny, effeminate villain (Kim Seong-oh) who gets wigged out when blood unexpectedly splatters on his white Dolce & Gabbana ensemble even as he's torturing someone for his less-pretty-but-just-as-amoral brother (Kim Hee-won) who specializes in donor harvesting. I even love a greedy, guilt-free hag (Baek Soo-ryeon) who kidnaps motherless children then pimps them out to run drug deals or credit card scams. And while I don't necessarily love the assassin's soul mate (Thanayong Wongtrakul) who really just wants to have a fair fight with our hero because his mirror image is so hotly efficient, I can at least get into the homoerotic aspect of their brutal embraces and animalistic sparring. Oh, maybe I do love him, too, God. Maybe I do! And because of that, I definitely love Lee Jeong-beom's The Man From Nowhere. Thanks God! I really appreciate it!

Mother: Family Ties Can Have a Strangling Effect When They're Too Strong

Moms of the world, it's time to face an ugly truth: You inspire some seriously freaky movies from all over the world: Mamma Roma (Italy), Mommie Dearest (U.S.A.), All About My Mother (Spain) and now Mother (South Korea) to name just a few. This last one -- from writer-director Bong Joon-ho -- stars actress Kim Hye-ja in what must certainly be the role of her life: an off-center, unlicensed acupuncturist/herbalist who'll go to any extreme to clear her son (Won Bin) of murder charges. That her 20-something child happens to be a simpleton with a spotty memory and a bad temper isn't helping her cause but like many a good mother before her, she forges on despite the odds against her. The cops exact a confession from her boy? So what! Her lawyer writes off the case as too difficult? So be it! Her son's shady best friend (Jin Gu) extorts her? That's fine as long as he furthers her efforts to unravel the case. What starts off as a heartbreaking homage to maternal devotion ends up a disturbing examination of obsession and an indictment of the sacrosanctity of familial bonds. If you sacrifice everything for someone, then you could end up with nothing but that in the end. Is it enough? You'll have to ask your mother.

Guns & Talks: Hitting All the Wrong Notes

There was a point midway through this awful buddy comedy (co-starring Lee Seo-jin) about hired killers when I wondered whether Guns & Talks would work better as a musical. As the young narrator (a bee-stung lipped Won Bin) waxed philosophical about the transformative power of love, I thought maybe this wouldn't be so unbearable if it were sung to a catchy tune. A later scene in which Shakespeare was shouted by actors in an avant garde production of Hamlet had me thinking: Yes! Yes! And here director Jang Jin could use Verdi's operatic version of the tragedy instead! But even that idea grew tired as the clock ticked away and my drifted to whether the toilet needed cleaning or the dog brushing and so on. Subplots involving a pretty newscaster, a smitten high school student, and one of the unlikeliest abortion strategies that I can recall never got overly complicated but they didn't add much to the experience either. The one surprise about Guns & Talks was Cantonese was the default language on the DVD even though the film is Korean. A background soundtrack lifted from a bad seventies porno movie meant no matter whether the actors were dubbed or speaking in their native tongue, the dialogue always sounded out of tune.

The Brotherhood of War: Boy's Life

I never considered that the love that dares not speak its name could be that between two brothers but such is the supposition of The Brotherhood of War, Kang Je-gyu's wacky war pic about two siblings drafted into service (and a weird battle of wills) during the Korean War. The opening sequence has the two young men feeding each other, sharing a popsicle, and fetishizing shoes. What with the string section in the background, you almost expect to see a class-usurping gay romance unfold before your disbelieving eyes. Instead, amid the prettily photographed explosions and hand-to-hand combat, what transpires is the making of a warrior—and a ruthless, bloodthirsty, wild-eyed one at that. Naturally, the younger, prettier sibling (Won Bin) is the conscience of the movie and the hunkier older one (Jang Dong-kun) is the fearless fighter. But the baby brother cries so much and seems so unappreciative of the butch one's self-sacrifices, perverse and self-aggrandizing as they might end up being, that you feel disappointed that the moralizer's head isn't blown off in some artful fashion with snow coming down from above and grenade-propelled dirt rising up from below. Can't blame communism for that.