In today’s paranoid society banks actively encourage us to pay them even more money to protect against identity theft. Gone are the days where people would proudly announce personal information as a sign of status. Na Hong-jin’s new movie depicts Ku Nam (Ha Jung-woo) a taxi driver in Yanbian, a Chinese province populated with Joseonjok’s (Chinese of Korean descent). Stuck in a banal life and carrying a debt he cannot pay and the shame of his wife’s abandonment, Nam accepts an assassination job from local crime boss Myung-Ga’s (Yun-Seok Kim) that will clear his debt and send him into South Korea in pursuit of his spouse.
On the surface Hong-jins film is about escape. Apart from fleeing from police and gangsters alike, Nam is escaping the nightmares of his wife’s infidelity that frequently plague him and the monotony of the life he’s fallen into. In trying to get away there seems to be very little thought put into the specific direction, when pushing forward nearly all avenues of investigation are met with complications emphasising the difficulty of getting away. When answers are given they aren’t definitive – only acting to further confuse the situation. Scenes of high energy are constantly cut to ones of calm creating an appropriate sense of disjointed bewilderment in the protagonist. Under closer inspection then, the film is a commentary on identity, escaping the prejudices of the past and constructing a new personality despite any encountered complications.