Han-gi (Jo Je-hyeon) is a bad guy. We know this because, in the opening of this offbeat Asian thriller, he sexually assaults college girl Sun-hwa (Seo Won). Five minutes later he's single-handedly fighting the police, refusing to apologise to his terrified victim and patiently letting her spit in his face.
From there, things go downhill. Fast.
After an elaborate revenge plot takes hold, Sun-hwa finds herself in thousands of pounds worth of debt. And the only way she can pay it back is to work it off in one of Han-gi's brothels.
She's got no idea Han-gi is behind her change in fortune, nor does she realise that his carefully planned revenge is quickly turning into an obsession as he silently watches her servicing her clients through a specially fitted two-way mirror.
Dark, bizarre and suffused with a strange sentimentality, Kim Ki-duk's film is quite a curious little feature. Predominantly silent (mainly because, when he does finally speak, he sounds as though he's just swallowed the contents of a helium balloon), thuggish bruiser Han-gi is as disturbed and disturbing a character as is likely to grace the screen this year.
Although the set-up strains the audience's disbelief, the mournful style - complete with a downbeat soundtrack reminiscent of triphop crooners Portishead - and meandering pace give this tale an unusual, near surreal, edge.
Perhaps that explains why, after trawling through South Korea's neon-lit sex industry, "Bad Guy" slowly blossoms into a sentimental love story about two characters who don't know what to say to each other, nor how to say it.
Whether or not that's enough to elevate its questionable "no-means-yes" plot, scenes of sexual violence, and evident fascination with this woman's destitution is another matter.
In Korean with English subtitles.
Bad Guy (Nabbeun Namja) (2003)
