Our take
Admittedly, The Man from Nowhere can feel a bit derivative. A quiet and mysterious stranger befriending a child, and ending up enacting his revenge when the child gets kidnapped… It feels like writer-director Lee Jeong-beom took two certain film plots and stitched it together into one. But where the film lacks in original story, The Man from Nowhere makes up for it with style, with high-contrast, rainy, moody scenes that linger into the mystery to make the few brutal, excellently choreographed action sequences pop. It has familiar tropes, and the backstory becomes a bit predictable because of it, but The Man from Nowhere keeps a steady pulse on the beating heart of the film– the friendship that makes these familiar tropes hold heavier emotional weight.
The story
A reclusive pawnshop owner goes on a brutal rampage to rescue a young girl kidnapped by a criminal organization.
Elsewhere
"Helmer Lee Jeong-beom shows a flair for action sequences, squeezing tension out of every fight scene choregraphed by Park Jung-ryul."
— Russell Edwards
Quiet pawnshop keeper Cha Tae-sik only has one friend: a child named So-mi. After So-mi is kidnapped, Tae-sik takes on a drug-and-organ trafficking ring in hopes of saving his only friend.
The ending.
Think Leon the Professional mixed with Taken.
Streaming arrival
Who picked it
Isabella Endrinal is a curator at A Good Movie to Watch. She's now free from the corporate night shift. Previous articles have been published in outlets such as NANG Magazine. She's currently catching up on some classic films… if she isn't coping with the fact that the Haikyu anime will end soon.
