The Man From Nowhere
Blu-ray/DVD
DIRECTED BY: Jeong-beom Lee
WRITTEN BY: Jeong-beom Lee
STARRING: Bin Won, Sae-ron Kim, Hyo-seo Kim
CJ Entertainment
RELEASE DATE: March 8, 2011

I wouldn’t say I’m a knowledge in Asian cinema; I’ve seen some of the required viewing films like Oldboy and a few of Kurosawa’s works, as well as ones like House of Flying Daggers and Hero, to name just a few. But despite my not having experienced many more of these movies, I’m always excited to see a new one. Running with this excitement, I was able to watch a movie recently that I had absolutely no prior knowledge of, knew nothing about the premise or story, and had not even seen a trailer for — a movie called The Man From Nowhere.

The movie tells the story of Tae-Sik Cha (Bin Won), a former special agent whose wife and unborn child are killed, sending him into a quiet, reclusive existence. He runs a lowly pawn shop and most people assume based on his appearance that he’s dangerous and keep their distance…except So-Mi Jeong (Sae-ron Kim), that is. So-Mi is a little girl with a bit of a kleptomaniac side to her who’s badly mistreated by everyone around her, bringing her to visit Tae-Sik often. She’s usually the one who does the talking as the quiet man just listens in silence, chiming in with a word or two from time to time. At first it might seem that he just ignores the little girl and possible doesn’t even like her, but as the movie progresses, we soon find out that she’s really the only thing close to a friend that he has.