The Man From Nowhere is an excellent action movie from Korea. Very good action scenes and well choreographed fights. Bin Won stars as a pawn shop owner who befriends a little girl who comes to the shop at times. Cha Tae Sik is a loner but obviously has a violent past that he is avoiding. The girl’s mother gets in the middle of a dispute between rival drug gangs and is in need of rescue. I won’t give away the rest of the movie because while it seems formulaic the script and acting make this one a standout. Gun-Fu, Kung-Fu, Car crashes, etc. etc. ece;;ent movie all around. From the Wiki:

Operating a pawn shop in a small neighborhood, Cha Tae-sik now leads a quiet life. His only connection to the rest of the world is a little girl, So-mi, who lives nearby. A heroin addict and So-mi’s mother, Hyo-jeong, smuggles drugs from a drug trafficking organization and entrusts Tae-sik with the product without his knowledge. When the traffickers find out about this they kidnap both Hyo-jeong and So-mi. The gang sends a number of thugs to Tae-sik’s pawn shop to retrieve the stolen drugs, but is easily overpowered by Tae-sik, making his identity ambiguous. However, upon learning that the gang now has in their possession both Hyo-jeong and So-mi, Tae-sik gives the beaten gang members what they are looking for.

Cha’s initial reluctance to get involved with the girl and his mysterious past are played very effectively. They come up with a reasonable background without the heavyhanded feel of a lot of “mysterious strangers who happen to be deadly assasins” so common nowadays.  His feelings toward the young girl go from coldness to warm smiles as he regains his humanity through his pursuit of her captors. Just an excellent action movie.