Don't get me wrong, it's great stuff... if you haven't seen a single thriller in the past 20 years. Officially being South Korean it is formulaic Hollywood filmmaking that doesn't even work well on that level. There is no distinctive style (and of course it's over-edited), an unnecessarily complicated plot for something that's devoid of substance, and overall there's very little fun to be had (which mostly comes from quirky side-characters). It's probably enough to have only seen Tony Scott's 'Man on Fire' for the story of 'Ajeossi' to feel stale. If furthermore you have seen 'Taken' with Liam Neeson you have seen a similar story taken to an extreme level that borders on parody. So in that case 'Ajeossi' is unlikely to work for you solely based on its story.
Perhaps above all this another problem I had with it was the, for me, lack of characters to care about. Whenever it tries to make one care for the characters it is overdoing it with obvious scenes that have little to no other purpose and in the end those people still lack much personality. Apparently the viewer is basically supposed to care about the girl (despite being a drag and a thief) simply because she is a child and because the mother was a crack whore. And for the "man from nowhere" one is supposed to care about because his pregnant wife got killed on the account of him and now the seclusive man is more or less nice to that aforementioned girl that gets no love and he eventually even gets out of his way to rescue the girl and EVEN goes so far that he is about to commit suicide when he thought he failed but of course the girl shows up before he can pull the trigger because...well, he's a good man at heart and not because the two actually have much of a bond to speak of.
You can rest assured that the film doesn't miss out on using flashbacks to provide back-story for the so-called "man from nowhere". Does it show the wife getting killed? Well, yes. It's a several minute-long flashback of the tragic event that is included AFTER we already heard several times what happened, with the flashback bringing very little new to the table. In moments like those and in about any scene with the little girl 'Ajeossi' is so sentimental it makes Spielberg look like Lars von Trier. One user on the movie's message board made a pretty telling post when he said that he "doesn't normally like foreign movies but this one was really awesome" after opening his post with "this was a great movie for anyone like me that grew up on Steven Seagal and Van Damme movies in the 90s".
My rating is admittedly harsh and I'm looking forward to reading "0 out of 12 people found the following review useful" but nowadays I just have very little patience for formulaic films that are professionally made but unengaging or lacking in anything particularly interesting.
Perhaps above all this another problem I had with it was the, for me, lack of characters to care about. Whenever it tries to make one care for the characters it is overdoing it with obvious scenes that have little to no other purpose and in the end those people still lack much personality. Apparently the viewer is basically supposed to care about the girl (despite being a drag and a thief) simply because she is a child and because the mother was a crack whore. And for the "man from nowhere" one is supposed to care about because his pregnant wife got killed on the account of him and now the seclusive man is more or less nice to that aforementioned girl that gets no love and he eventually even gets out of his way to rescue the girl and EVEN goes so far that he is about to commit suicide when he thought he failed but of course the girl shows up before he can pull the trigger because...well, he's a good man at heart and not because the two actually have much of a bond to speak of.
You can rest assured that the film doesn't miss out on using flashbacks to provide back-story for the so-called "man from nowhere". Does it show the wife getting killed? Well, yes. It's a several minute-long flashback of the tragic event that is included AFTER we already heard several times what happened, with the flashback bringing very little new to the table. In moments like those and in about any scene with the little girl 'Ajeossi' is so sentimental it makes Spielberg look like Lars von Trier. One user on the movie's message board made a pretty telling post when he said that he "doesn't normally like foreign movies but this one was really awesome" after opening his post with "this was a great movie for anyone like me that grew up on Steven Seagal and Van Damme movies in the 90s".
My rating is admittedly harsh and I'm looking forward to reading "0 out of 12 people found the following review useful" but nowadays I just have very little patience for formulaic films that are professionally made but unengaging or lacking in anything particularly interesting.