A FILM OF TWISTS : "BAD GUY"

I seem to be all about famous auteurs with questionable reputations these days. Kim ki-duk is, without a doubt one of them. Then again we can say the same thing about South Korean cinema in general. Korean cinema tends to be something you either like or you don’t I find. Then again, it’s my personal opinion that if you can get used to the idea of doing things a little bit differently, Korean cinema can be your friend. One has to be open to have one’s preconceptions challenged though. Even more so if you are going for a director like Kim ki-duk. Bad guy is the story of… Well seemingly what is a very bad guy indeed. Han is seemingly mute, although his toughness and fighting skills makes him a feared and revered figure in Seoul’s red light district. He and his two friends help run and “protect” a particular brothel in this region. One day, as he saunters through the park, Sun, a twenty one year old, beautiful student catches his eye. The thing is, he doesn’t just think she’s sexy, he actually falls in love with her. In a stage managed robbery gone-wrong,Sun is forced to start work in the brothel Han helps manage. Adaptation his hard, Sun refuses to accept her fate at first; but then as time goes by, she slowly begins to adapt to her new life. The question is however, will she adapt enough to actually fall in love with Han ? Now, if you watch a few of Kim ki-duk’s films, you cannot, in my opinion, avoid noticing that there are a few tropes that he loves using over and over again. And one of them is definitely the “Stockholm Syndrome” that we also see here. In many films, the characters are kept, often as not from birth, in isolated conditions, away from the world (Think of The Bow or Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter and Spring). At some point they start fighting against the conditions they’re in. Then they accept them. And in fact they reach the point where they grow to love and defend these conditions. I’m not saying that the conditions are always necessarily as “bizarre” (for lack of a better word) as Bad Guy (or The Bow) but still. When you get over how disturbing the whole thing actually is, it is interesting to consider the body’s defense mechanisms under these circumstances. Ki-duk actually unites this, in quite a few of his films, with the concept of fate. It is as if the acceptance of the characters is more or less due to the fact that this is the way things were meant to be. This was what was meant to happen all along. It goes as far as throwing a bit of the supernatural into the mix (and often when we expect it the very least). And, again as often as not, the endings are happy. Or can be considered happy. I mean, I found the end of Bad guy profoundly disturbing, but hey, the characters seem quite happy… Bad guy and Kim Ki-duk in particular, will definitely give you something to think about. I strongly suggest you give it a go, if only for the sake of having a different experience.