Address Unknown (2001) R - 3 Stars

OMG this is one of my favorite Korean subtitled movies. When I have tried to explain it to my friends, all they can say is "huh?" The movies takes place 1970, seventeen years after the end of the Korean War. Innocence is shattered in this small town for these three teenagers. Almost every character will face a tragic ending. And very important to me... No animals were harmed in the making of this movie.

Chang-Guk's Mother (Pang Eun-Jin) dreams of America and desperately writes to the man whom gave her a child during the war. She keeps writing letters but they always come back "Address Unknown".

Chang-Guk (Yang Dong-Kun) her son is a half bred Korean. His father was a African American soldier and the town treats Chang-Guk like an outcast because of his looks and his enormous size. The only job he can get is working for a Dog-eye (Cho Jae Hyun) who catches dogs illegally and beats them with a baseball bat to preserve and sell fresh meat. It's Chang-Guk's job to catch and bring back any dog he sees. He doesn't have any friends except Ji-Hum (Young-min Kim).

Eun-Ok (Min-jung Ban) is a young pretty girl but has one eye horrible damaged by a boy playing war games who shot her in the eye. The town is next to a military base and a young GI takes a fancy to the girl and promises to fix her eye through with military doctors. Ji-Hum thinks she is pretty the way she is and allows her to have a small dog with out telling Dog-eye.

When the son finds out his mother slept with an America, he cuts off her boobs so no man will ever find her attractive again. He then goes on a rampage and takes the baseball bat to the Dog-eye in the same manor he has used on the dogs. He doesn't want to live anymore and tries to kill himself only to find himself stuck head first in mud and suffocates. When the mother find him, she drags him home and lights the whole trailer on fire and just before it goes up, the mailman delivers a letter to her home. Oh yeah and Eun-Ok pokes out her eye again to look like she did before. A lot of more unusual parts to this movie but these are the parts I featured in my notes.

Tartan Video
Director: Kim Ki-duk
Writer: Kim Ki-duk

I viewed 8/06