valis1949 ADDRESS UNKNOWN is such a grubby and begrimed film. It features ugly characters in ugly situations and settings, and offers little or nothing in the way of artistic redemption. It is nearly impossible to believe that the same director, Ki-duk Kim, fashioned the elegant and haunting film, "3-Iron" which charted the despair and loneliness of a homeless couple who seek solace and sanctuary in the empty vacation homes of strangers. ADDRESS UNKNOWN skirts the line between pathos and bathos, and then plunges in without a backward glance. Thus, ADDRESS UNKNOWN becomes almost punch-drunk and silly instead of emotive or poignant.

sitenoise Address Unknown is about the occupants of a small town situated next to an American military base in the Korean countryside. Writer/Director Kim goes beyond a mere indictment of American presence. He displays brother against brother (North vs. South) and calls into question the responses to it.This one is probably for Kim Ki-Duk completists only. It is a remarkable film in its relentless presentation of pain. Every single scene in this 2 hour film involves pain, emotional or physical.An American soldier pays for the surgery so a young Korean girl can regain the sight in her impotent, freaky-looking right eye and then wants her to be his sweetheart in return, wink-wink. When she shows a little interest in the Korean boy who liked her just the way she was before the surgery, the American becomes incredulous and tries to hurt her, but before he can she pokes her own eye out to erase her debt to the soldier. Meanwhile, the Korean boy who liked her just the way she was schemes to kill the two Korean boys who have been stealing his money and beating him up. When the girl looks freaky again and goes to express her love to the Korean boy, she finds him in jail for shooting the American soldier in the genitals with a bow and arrow.That's only one of the subplots. I've seen a lot of films about pain and despair but none that have been so oppressively constant in their execution. This is a great film by one of the great contemorary directors. But you need to be ready for it or you may be repulsed. It's not slasher film gross at all. The really dirty stuff, like hanging dogs from a tree and beating them to death with a baseball bat, is done off camera. Thank God.

Michael Cumming Not unlike the Oscar Wilde play from which my "One Line Summary" for this comment is co-opted the director of `Address Unknown' requires his audience to think. In all of the Kim Ki-duk films I have seen (The Isle, Address Unknown, Bad Guy) what lies on the surface differs greatly from what lies beneath it. He is working in a language of metaphor and allegory with characters that range from caricature to archetype to fodder. By fodder I mean they are impenetrable and near impossible to empathize/sympathize with for the sole reason that emotional attachment is not the director's intention. He is creating a fictional world made to comment on the world we live in.By exploring the eclectic residents of an isolated South Korean village in close proximity to an American military base Ki-duk is dealing with a number of issues such as globalization (the base, the bullies who moved to America), language (the theme of English, the comic interlude of the Playboy translation), gender (obvious), race (obvious), history (that family whose father turned out to be a traitor, the constant references to the past from the veterans), tradition (the archery), relationships (Korean girl and U.S. solider), war (obvious) and violence (obvious). The bleak, violent, at times repulsive world the film takes place in is so over-the-top that the audience can't help but think that it is just a means to an end.In films like `The Isle' and `The Bad Guy' the black humour and sarcasm are more evident. `Address Unknown' is a tad more subtle but there are more than enough hints to indicate the film should not be taken at face value. An excellent example is the constant, almost laughable violence.Kim Ki-duk is one of a handful of directors striving to create intelligent cinema that is accessible as well. The East is bursting at the seams with talent and I really hope it starts to get the recognition it deserves.

Simon Booth Call me strange, but Kim Ki-Duk's THE ISLE is one of my favourite Korean movies. Not just the beautiful imagery, not just those scenes that had people fainting in the theatres, but because I empathised a lot with the characters, and the symbolism of their environment and their actions was very much in tune with my sensibilities. OK, so I'm strange . Much as I enjoyed watching it, I won't try and argue that watching THE ISLE is a 'pleasant' experience - not one to leave you with a smile, so I was prepared for something a little bit serious and grim with ADDRESS UNKNOWN. It is not a little bit serious and grim at all... it is *completely* serious and amazingly grim.Kim Ki-Duk is less interested in exploring the somewhat global issues of human feelings here, but instead wants to explore the feelings of a nation - Korea, still living in the shadow of the Korean war. The characters here come across as a little apersonal (it's ok, I just invented it) because they are embodiments of the country's experience... the division, the loss of autonomy, the dehumanisation that people feel, caught up in the conflicts between North and South and between Capitalism and Communism. Obviously to suggest that this was a universal Korean experience would be unreasonable, though Kim Ki-Duk is not interested in exploring balancing factors in this particular movie. People suffer. And suffer. And suffer. And then they suffer for a while. He is relentless in his examination of the pain that he clearly feels, for himself and for his country.It must be said that I know almost nothing about Korean history (though I am learning a lot as I type!), or of contemporary Korean society, so I don't know how common the feelings that Kim Ki Duk expresses here are, or how realistic his assessment of Korea's post war condition is. It all feels very believable, very convincing... but certainly none of the Korean people I have met are quite as utterly miserable as they must be if ADDRESS UNKNOWN were an accurate depiction of their lives.I think there is no doubt that for at least some people, and some communities, the feelings that Kim Ki Duk brings to the fore in the movie represent real feelings and real situations. But I think that it must be assumed that it is not an even-handed assessment of the situation, that he was quite certain what he wanted to say and permitted no deviation from it. In a way this is the movie's undoing... it is so relentless in its pursuit that it becomes too easy to get detached from it, to treat it as political allegory rather than a tale of human hardship. A little more warmth, a little bit of humour, maybe just one or two moments where at least one character was *slightly* happy... and I would have been much more able to bond with them, and their tragedies and miseries would have been that much more poignant as a result.A fairly small matter, and to a degree this observation may simply be an observation that I am not Korean. The movie is a very personal look at the feelings and circumstances of a nation, and having had no comparable experience myself, it is obvious that I'm going to struggle to fully relate. If I couldn't empathise with the characters though, I could at least sympathise with them. The characters themselves were good characters, and the performances were mostly very good. Notable exceptions are the American soldiers in the movie, whose English dialogue and delivery is really quite embarrassingly bad The movie is very light on dialogue - little that is important is expressed through words, because it doesn't need to be. Always a good thing in a movie.It is the younger characters of the movie that are centre stage, those who were born years after the Korean war ended, but are still suffering its consequences. It's always refreshing to see young actors deliver mature performances, and this is one such example.THE ISLE probably impacted me mostly because of the visuals - the beautifully photographed and haunting environment in which the movie took place. ADDRESS UNKNOWN is not nearly as pretty, which can partly be based on location, but also the fact that the style is a lot more realistic, gritty even, as opposed to THE ISLE's abstractness. It is still well filmed though. I wrote of THE ISLE after seeing it:"if you want to take away the beauty of his film, you have to be willing to pay the price of the horror"ADDRESS UNKNOWN is a less successful movie for me because once you get past it's horror, instead of beauty you find there's just a bit more horror . OK, it's not as bad as that... but the tone is quite unremittingly bleak. I don't know whether to recommend the movie or not. I liked it, but I'm not sure how many others will. Definitely not a movie to put on to take your mind off a troublesome day anyway!