To be frank with you, I did not expect a lot from the beginning, but South Korean film “A Man of Reason” tremendously bored me from the beginning to the end. While there is nothing particularly new or refreshing in the overall result of this miserably mediocre dreck, it is so ponderously boring and unexciting in many aspects that I actually did not feel like missing anything at all even though I got quite drowsy more than once when I watched it at a local movie theater early in this morning.

The story mainly revolves around one very, very, very laconic ex-con named Soo-hyeok (Jung Woo-sung), who has just been released after 10 years of incarceration at the beginning of the film. He is an ex-member of some powerful criminal organization, and we gradually come to gather that he was sent to the prison due to whatever he did for the current boss of that criminal organization at that time.

After receiving a little generous present from the boss, Soo-hyeok visits the boss for showing some gratitude. When Soo-hyeok says that he will just lead a plain ordinary life instead of rejoining the criminal organization, the boss sardonically ridicules Soo-hyeok’s decision, and, though he lets Soo-hyeok go in the end, he soon instructs his right-had guy to watch on Soo-hyeok for a while at least.

Not so surprisingly, this right-hand guy turns out to have some other idea on how to deal with their current problem with Soo-hyeok. Probably because of being envious of how the boss trusts Soo-hyeok more than him, he subsequently hires a psychotic professional killer couple, and this murderous couple is certainly eager to go for their next target which seems to be an easy job just like their previous target.

Meanwhile, Soo-hyeok approaches to an old girlfriend of his, who has led a quiet normal life along with her cute little daughter since she got pregnant not long after his incarceration. It goes without saying that Soo-hyeok is the biological father of her daughter, but she is not so willing to let him enter her life again for understandable reasons. She is quite concerned about her daughter’s future due to her terminal illness, and Soo-hyeok may be the one who will take care of her daughter instead once she passes away, but she also remembers too well what kind of man he once was.

It is not much of a spoiler to tell you that 1) the daughter of Soo-hyeok’s ex-girlfriend is eventually kidnapped and 2) Soo-hyeok is the only one who can possibly save this young girl as a man with a particular set of skills. As clashing with that crazy professional killer couple, Soo-hyeok causes a lot of troubles for that criminal organization, and the boss certainly wants his right-hand guy to take care of this increasing messy situation as soon as possible.

Now you will be reminded of countless action thriller films ranging from “Taken” (2008) to “John Wick” (2014), and “A Man of Reason”, which is incidentally released as “The Protector” in South Korean theaters today, surely serves us several gritty physical action scenes, but none of these scenes shows enough style or substance to hold our attention. While they are mostly competent in technical aspects, they do not propel the story or the characters much on the whole, and we become all the more aware of how superficial the movie is in terms of story and character. Its attitude is certainly solemn and serious to say the least, but it sadly forgets to fill its rudimentary storyline and broad characters with details and nuances, and the result is one of the most joylessly hollow experiences I have ever had at a movie theater.

As the director and the lead actor of the film, Jung Woo-sung definitely tries as much as behind and in front of the camera. He is not a bad filmmaker as far as I can observe from his result, but his direction and performance are frequently limited by the barebone screenplay by written by him and his co-writer Jung Hae-sin. No matter how much Jung struggles to bring some human depth to his character, Soo-hyeok remains to be a bland and uninteresting walking stiff mainly defined by his fighting skill, and we become less and less interested in whatever is being at stake for Soo-hyeok.

The screenplay is also quite lousy in case of handling several substantial supporting characters in the story, some of whom are very distracting while often looking like belonging to a very different movie. As a matter of fact, I felt sorry for Kim Nam-gil, Park Sung-woon, Kim Jun-han, and Park Yoo-na because they usually resort to overacting without much clear direction for their acting, through Park occasionally shows a bit of dark sense of humor despite her thankless supporting role.

In conclusion, “A Man of Reason” is one of the most disappointing South Korean films of this year, and it actually made me wonder whether I was too harsh to another South Korean action thriller film “The Man from Nowhere” (2010). Unlike many other reviewers and critics, I did not like “The Man from Nowhere” much due to its shallow story and mediocre characters, but that movie has much more skill and energy compared to “A Man of Reason” at least, and maybe I should revisit it someday for checking out whether it is actually better than I thought at that time.