Once on the island One of the most iconic Korean films of 2010, Fierce easily balances between piercing drama and hard slasher, realistically combining household elements with action.
The director skillfully stretches the disclosure of the characters of the friends of a distant and cloudless childhood - a cold resident of the capital Hei Won and an open provincial Bok Nam - for the entire duration of the picture. Their relationship becomes the thread that binds a very non-trivial plot into a single whole.
Broken in childhood, a wooden pipe symbolically suggests that the main characters have lost the common melody long ago. When nervous and alienated Hay Won comes on vacation to the remote island of Mo-Do, she is only happy with Bok Nam, whose benevolence sharply contrasts not only with her former friend, but also with other inhabitants of Mo-Do, capable of decorating any American horror about the horrors of the hinterland.
The polarity of the characters of the heroines is designed to reflect their incompleteness and stiffness. Hay Won lacks the emotional openness of Bok Nam, and the islander lacks the determination of Hay Won. Each of them is in its own way unhappy and “cruel”. Both instinctively reach for each other, but the experience does not allow you to really relate. The string of their relationship then weakens - and events turn into a calm channel, then stretches to the limit - and the plot threatens to break through a storm on an unprepared viewer.
An important component of the picture is the reflection of the inner world of a woman suffering from domestic violence. A clear appeal to compassion thanks to thoughtful images makes you remember the classics of domestic literature.
Finally, Hardened is not a story of beautiful revenge. In the frames for the film, Bok Nam resolutely clutches the sickle in his hand, but I think that the motive for revenge was not the key here.
Director Jang Chol Seo does not twist the plot to the detriment of the artistic value of the film, unlike many Asian filmmakers. Having been an assistant to Kim Ki-duk, he learned well the rule of his boss: “Make sure that the audience cannot take their eyes off the screen.”
8 out of 10
Original