Differing notions of manhood inform Jeong-Beom Lee’s The Man From Nowhere and Joseph Mantegna’s Mailer documentary. Lee’s movie is one of the better ones to grace this record-breaking CIFF 35, a thriller that blends a complicated, provocative plot with a sentimentality that shies just short of saccharine. Mantegna’s movie tracks the career and family life of a conflicted, often repugnant man who also was a cultural force.
The reason the Korean movie works so well is it’s dynamic as hell. It casts the charismatic actor Bin Won as Cha Tae-shik, a killing machine who finds himself fighting two competing drug cartels as he tries to rescue a winsome little girl from becoming a source of body parts. The latter trajectory evokes the fine Stephen Frear movie Dirty Pretty Things.
What also makes Man work is its pacing and characterization. The city shots glisten with danger and allure, the little girl So-Mi is a doll, and the thugs, particularly the Korean who masterminds the smack factory where kids function as “ants,” or mules, is smarmy in all the right ways. The movie works hard; it’s always on. And Bin Won is one to watch. Even the backstory plugs in just right, giving depth to Bin Won’s portrayal of Tae-shik as a kind of Asian Dirty Harry. The manhood here celebrates the loner/savior who gets his hands dirty but keeps his ethics clean.
If only that could be said for Mailer, a great writer who also was a multimedia artist before the term was coined. Too bad he was a bellicose lout, too: Not only did he give manhood a bad name (stabbing the first of seven wives isn’t a plus), he almost singlehandedly generated modern feminism, trivializing even the notion of infidelity. That his nine kids turned out so well suggests that bad role models needn’t be a deterrent to maturity.
The period footage is terrific, and there’s no doubt of Mailer’s creativity, which spanned 50 years. But movies like Maidstone, in which Mailer bit Rip Torn’s ear, didn’t help his reputation.
Man: ✭✭✭✭
Mailer: ✭✭✭
Reviews are scored on a four-star scale.
