Adeel Hail
Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.
Marva
It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,
suite92
Hyeong-do is assigned to terminate a man. The man asks that he give a certain woman some money. He does this. The woman is someone who he knew from earlier in his life, who used to be a singer.He finds her, gives her the money, and meets with her now and then. He puts off killing the man, but later is cornered into doing it.He grows closer to the woman, and helps her buy a small shop. He encourages her to sing again. He decides to resign at a meeting. His company sends two others to escort him to the meeting. They were also assigned to kill him.Throughout much of the film, he consults a disgraced former operative that the company let live for some unclear reason. He confides in this man. He decides to take the singer and her two children to a 'safe' place.How well does that work? -----Scores------Cinematography: 8/10 Good.Sound: 8/10 The subtitles seemed to be good. Incidental music and foley were folded in nicely.Acting: 9/10 I liked the principal actors very much.Screenplay: 8/10 Reasonable story, well told. Loved the final revenge phase.
krazysoon
A company man is a film about a man who works for a company of assassins that is actually disguised as a metal company in order to remain secretive. The film starts out with the main character and a young temp who is about to go murder a few people. After the job the main character was supposed to kill the temp but leaves him alive and wishes that some money is delivered to his family. The main character falls for the mother and begins to realize that he does not want to continue in the line of work but rather start a new life with this woman. Only problem is it isn't a job that one can actually just quit.The film is predictable for the most part and a few of the scenes I found a bit funny. The action sequences are good but as some of the reviews mention the dialogue and the characters are a bit one dimensional. One reviewer compared it to a film called A Bittersweet Life, which also deals with an assassin but the story is deeper and the acting is amazing. If you haven't seen a Bittersweet Life please watch it rather than this film but if you have seen it and want to watch this, you will see the similarities and major differences. I think both characters however carry themselves the same. Start off as emotionless but slowly begin to care for what they want. A Company Man is available on Netflix and is in Korean with English subtitles. Not sure if A Bittersweet Life is on Netflix.
hangchai
i wouldn't say the movie is necessary bad, but just average.The styling and action sequences are filmed very well.However the story seems just too forced and we never get the chance to explore the protagonist or the other characters and their inner turmoil.And even till the end of the movie, i feel totally nothing for the characters.One point that i do wish to bring out is that having watched "A Bittersweet Life", i feel the director 'borrowed' too much from that movie, whether it's the story, the styling and including the acting from the main actor such as the look of being lost with regret to even the ending of looking at the mirror trying to figure out why the whole thing is coming down like this.If you haven't seen "A Bittersweet Life", i suggest you skip this one and see that instead... If you have seen both, i'm sure you get what i mean.
cremea
SPOILERS!A Company Man is 2012 Korean movie about a contract killer operating in a modern day corporate structure. It is an action drama.The film stars So Ji-sub as Hyung-do. Hyung-do is white collar worker employed at the corporate office of a metal works company. He's a loyal mid-management type who's married to his job, and, he goes about his daily 9-5 routine as so many other people do in this world. He also happens to be a professional assassin, as is, apparently, everyone else at the entire office he works at. This a legit company with typical business concerns, but they also kill people. There are several dozen people or so that work for this company, and everybody working here is well aware of the company's dual purpose. From the chairman on down to the receptionist at the front desk, everybody has their part to play in making sure the company is a success on both fronts.There must be a lot of people that need to be killed in Korea, in order for a corporation such as this to have sprung up to outsource all the contract killing work that's seemingly available. While the existence of such a company as this is hard to fathom, it does provide for somewhat of an interesting dynamic here; office politics, personal employee interactions, and the like, are on display (just as within any small to mid size company work environment the world over). There's board meetings, company retreats, promotions vied for, office parties, etc…it's one big happy work/family that seems perfectly content with what they're doing. It's an odd and intriguing premise to watch play out, a premise which posits a work environment which can sort of be summarized as: "Hey, Good job everyone on getting that shipment of girders out to Japan on schedule… Let's all welcome back Mrs. Kim from maternity leave…Mr. So, you're late for knife fighting practice…Project team B, we need that cost analysis on the Jeju project asap…Today is Ms. Bae's birthday party…Now, everyone be on time tomorrow, cause we have lots of people to kill this week, etc…"…I'm generalizing the atmosphere at play here, but, you get the idea.Hyung-do is a rising star in the company, and its best assassin, He's tiring of the corporate grind involved with his job however, and he's also becoming more & more sentimental with the people he's continually charged with killing off. Eventually, he wants to "retire" from the business…but, as one would imagine, this is a company that is somewhat difficult to extricate one's self from on their own terms.This film devotes the middle hour or so of its story to the retiring hit-man looking after the young protégé he was supposed to eliminate, and subsequently romancing and falling in love with his mom along the way. I'm game for a good romance story intermixed with my action, but the love angle here is poorly executed…it drags along & is too underwritten for you to engage yourselves into the romantic relationship between the hit-man & mother. There's also some nonsense back story angle about how the mother was a former pop star/singer in her youth, and the hit-man was once the young love/star struck dork who delivered meals to her…this "sub" story was told via various flashbacks from the past, and it's all terribly unnecessary to the romantic story in the present…Spend some money on a second unit writing team will you?Eventually, you arrive to the climax of the story…then, revenge & bloodshed ensue!There are a few decent action set pieces here and there, but, this is not a balls to the wall action film by any means, and, those action scenes are few and far between. That's not really the problem though…It's mostly undermined by its weakly written retirement/romantic story (which should have been a highlight, instead of a detriment). My lasting impression of this film was that it was OK, but, it was also very disjointed and muddled down a bit by its lackluster screen writing.Bottom Line: 6 to 7 range…It's a 6 star film IMO …Not mandatory…Watchable though.
