Bad guy

"Nabbun namja" dir. Kim Ki-duk

“Bad Guy”, in Korean “Nabbun namja” (나쁜 남자) is another example of Kim Ki-duk’s film style. It reflects his special taste toward violence and cruelty and keeps his identity on the film characteristics.

On one side, the characters that are always in the outside borders of society. Han-ki is a young man that seems to live out of the law. One day, he notices Sun-hwa, a beautiful college student, and falls for her. In front of everyone, even her boyfriend. Han-ki violently kiss her but she neglects and humiliates him in public by splitting on him. After this event he decides to revenge. Han-ki, helped by some friends, involves Sun-hwa in a debt that she cannot pay back. She finally ends in a prostitution district of Seoul forced to sell her body to repay the sum.

The scene when he forces her to kiss him

Soon, Han-ki will be obsessed with the girl presence. He observes her through the mirror. This is another important point in the film, the development of the ‘voyeur’ figure. This voyeur attitude is also shown in the poster of the film. We can appreciate him watching her and his reflexion on the mirror. Watching how she is suffering will lead him to be in love with her but this won’t change his attitude.

The film depicts the complete transformation of a woman that goes from a very conservative position, refusing the situation, to the opposite attitude. She will finally become a prostitute. Furthermore, what it’s more representative, the movie reflects the idea of women’s psychology that women prefer bad guys rather than nice ones.

In fact, at the end and besides everything that she has gone through, Sun-hwa falls in love with Han-ki (kind of syndrome of Stockholm). Even she goes to prison when he is arrested and asks him not to die there.

The idea of love is mixed with pain. These two elements are quite difficult to separate in Kim Ki-duk’s cinema.

Again, the director plays with silence giving much more importance to the image than the dialogs. Probably, this has become one of the most remarkable elements about his film style.