3 ½ stars
It’s a familiar story.
A mobster gets released from prison after serving ten years. He kept his mouth shut for the entire decade, never telling the authorities that when he hacked and slashed his way through a crowded nightclub he was only following his boss’ orders. So, on the day he’s released, the boss has him picked up and brought to him for a celebration and a talk about what the gangster will be doing for the mob in the future. Only, after ten long years in prison, the gangster no longer wants to be a gangster.
While the basic framework for A Man of Reason may be recognizable, the way that director/co-writer/star Jung Woo-sung brings it to life is not just fresh and fierce, but also wildly entertaining. And like many good action/thrillers, the huge reason for A Man of Reason being so much fun is the casting of the bad guys. And the bad girl. Strangely, the big mob leader, Eung-kook, played by Park Sung-Woong, is the least developed character in the story, and the recently sprung criminal, Soo-hyeok (Jung) plays the stong, silent type so effectively that you almost forget he’s there.
But the bad guys make up for it. Kim Jun-han plays the weasely second in command, Kang, to perfection. Whether he’s cleaning his shotgun with an almost sexual intensity or shamelessly kowtowing to his boss, Kang makes your skin crawl and rooting for him to meet a horrible end is one of the thrills of the movie. Kang’s sliminess is nicely balanced by the comically unhinged hitmen he hires to kill Soo-hyeok, Woo-jin and Jin-ah, played by Kim Nam Gil And Park Yoo Na. Woo-jin bounces off the wall like he’s got a million watts running through his spine, but Kim never lets his performance cross the line into camp or caricature. As wild as he gets, he never lets you forget that his character is a homicidal maniac. Woo-jin’s wildness is nicely balanced by the Zen-like calm of his partner, Jin-ah, who is more than just the eye in the storm of their partnership: when push comes to shove, she’s the deadlier of the duo.
Such cool bad guys deserve plenty of big action scenes and A Man of Reason does not disappoint. Although this is his first time directing a feature film, Jung has plenty of action experience in front of the camera in films like Steel Rain and The Good The Bad The Weird, and that has given him the confidence to be original in filming the fights. He features a knife fight, but shoots it using flashlights. There’s a car “chase” that takes place in the lobby of an exclusive office building, and another in a tunnel featuring flaming haybales. The more personal one-on-one battles between Soo-hyeok and the variuius bad guys may be less spectacular, but are well choreographed and exciting, too.
