I love avenger movies or good ol' revenge movies. They speak to me. But not all revenge movies are created equal. Most of them are good, but some are pretty lousy. For instance, it can't be rushed. If a person is killed after one scene, that's not enough to make me vested in him/her being avenged. Another thing that has to be right is that the protagonist has to be someone I like. If it's a character I don't care much for then I'm not going to care much for his/her cause. One more thing is that the revenge has to be commensurate with the person's own emotions. If the injustice done to the protagonist was immense, so should be the revenge.
"The Man from Nowhere" was a top tier revenge movie.
A little girl named Jeong So-Mi (Kim Sae-ron) was constantly bothering her neighbor Cha Tae-sik (Won Bin). She was a bug-a-boo, but she had no one else to hang out with because her mother was an addict and she didn't have any friends. She wasn't harmful, mean, or irritating; in fact she was adorable and just needed love. She wasn't getting any love at home so she sought it from her neighbor the pawn shop owner.
Her mother ran afoul of Man-seok (Kim Hee-won), a big time drug dealer, which got her killed and her daughter taken. Cha never showed it, but So-mi was special to him which meant they just took the wrong girl. Cha went on a righteous mission to find So-mi and no one was going to stop him.
"The Man from Nowhere" just got better and better as it progressed. It already had the right elements to be a great revenge movie, then they added emotion to it as well. They had already made Cha a skilled and merciless killer willing to sacrifice his own body and his own freedom to find So-mi, but before that, they made sure that the audience would have the same desire as him for So-mi to be found. I didn't want Cha to rest until he reached So-mi, and if that meant going through everyone in Korea, then so be it; and Cha clearly felt the same way. TMFN is compelling, it's awesome, it's moving. It was the complete package.
"The Man from Nowhere" was a top tier revenge movie.
A little girl named Jeong So-Mi (Kim Sae-ron) was constantly bothering her neighbor Cha Tae-sik (Won Bin). She was a bug-a-boo, but she had no one else to hang out with because her mother was an addict and she didn't have any friends. She wasn't harmful, mean, or irritating; in fact she was adorable and just needed love. She wasn't getting any love at home so she sought it from her neighbor the pawn shop owner.
Her mother ran afoul of Man-seok (Kim Hee-won), a big time drug dealer, which got her killed and her daughter taken. Cha never showed it, but So-mi was special to him which meant they just took the wrong girl. Cha went on a righteous mission to find So-mi and no one was going to stop him.
"The Man from Nowhere" just got better and better as it progressed. It already had the right elements to be a great revenge movie, then they added emotion to it as well. They had already made Cha a skilled and merciless killer willing to sacrifice his own body and his own freedom to find So-mi, but before that, they made sure that the audience would have the same desire as him for So-mi to be found. I didn't want Cha to rest until he reached So-mi, and if that meant going through everyone in Korea, then so be it; and Cha clearly felt the same way. TMFN is compelling, it's awesome, it's moving. It was the complete package.