The Man From Nowhere

The Korean title Ajusshi means "Mister"

Won Bin

A man with a mysteriously dark past open’s a small pawn shop, preferring to live in solitude he virtually shuts himself off from the world. The only person Cha Tae-Sik takes any interest in is his precocious 10-year-old neighbor So-mi, whose drug addicted mother crosses a local gang of criminals in a drug deal leading to both mother and daughter being kidnapped by some very violent gangsters. The pawnbroker realizes that he may be their only hope of making it out of the situation alive. When he enters into a tenuous agreement with the local mob, he becomes the target of an intense police manhunt and finds himself besieged on all sides. The closer Tae-Sik gets to So-mi and her mother, the more his dark past reveals itself.

Kim Sae-ron

Winning a shed load of Asian Film Awards and becoming South Korea’s highest grossing film in 2010, The Man From Nowhere is high-octane entertainment of the highest class with more claret than Bordeaux. This is an example of what an action thriller should look like, it even compares to the Hong Kong gangster movies by the great Johnnie To. The film was written and directed by Lee Jeong-beom and stars Won Bin as Cha Tae-Sik whose character is like a superman on speed, you also would have seen him in Mother (2009) playing a young man with limited mental capacity who became a murder suspect and probably in the Korean war film Brotherhood (2004). Also worth a mention is the talented 10-year-old Kim Sae-ron who won Best New Actress in the Korean Film Awards for her role of So-mi. If this is your kind of genre: enjoy.