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Jang Hoon has a commercial hit on his hands with this period piece about a notorious abuse of power in South Korea
Dir: Jang Hoon. South Korea. 2017. 137mins
Palpably well-crafted and acted, Jang Hoon’s A Taxi Driver casts Song Kang-ho as a cabbie who takes a German journalist (Thomas Kretschmann) into the Korean city of Gwangju in May 1980 in the middle of an uprising in which paratroopers opened fire on protesters, killing hundreds. Arrriving in Korean cinemas less than a year after citizens poured onto the streets of Seoul to protest - and eventually unseat - President Park Geun-hye, Jang Hoon’s drama seems well placed to tap into the political consciouness both locally and overseas when it opens at home and in a raft of international territories (US, UK and Australia/NZ) after closing the Fantasia International Film Festival. Further Asian territories come on line in September.
Front and centre is an excellent Song Kang-ho who repeatedly demonstrates how his presence can transform a film
The film is set during the brief time when martial law was declared in South...