Derailed

I... I have no idea what I was just watch. It's a nice action, the story how, it's just weird normal? I don't man. They story is easy to understood but they all just so dumb like dumb dumb but I like the romance he's really a good kid.

Another Don Lee film that isn't that bad but it doesn't really focus as much on Lee as it does on the young runaway characters that his character tries to help and therefore is more their film than a Lee film, so he just supports. I couldn't really justify liking these youths as they do some shady stuff and at times deserve what they get, but the cast is very good for what could have been a very simply drama. Lee's presence in any film adds a "spark" and that is no different here. Also, the cinematography is good and the film is never boring as it's filled with conflicted characters. Still an entertaining film.

The movie has a good script overall but too many characters I think. We are not vested in any one because there are too many. The only one is Ma Dong and he give a good performance but his character was a bit tainted with storyline given. A married man who picks up girls in the middle of the night to have job interviews where they can work at a karaoke bar? A good father who ultimately does what is right (no spoilers). A decent movie but not Ma Dong-Seok's best. Ma is off the rails - derailed - get back to it Ma, back on the rails friend.

For some reason then I have been putting off watching the 2016 South Korean crime action "Doo Namja" (aka "Derailed") until now in 2022. Why? Well, I am not sure really, I guess other movies just kept piling up, and I wasn't sure what I was missing out on here from director Seong-Tae Lee.

While "Doo Namja" is watchable, I don't feel like I have been missing out on a particular extraordinary movie in the history of South Korean cinema. Sure, the storyline was interesting enough, or at least certain aspects of it were, but I wasn't overly impressed.

The storyline here was a little bit all over the place, as the audience follow three different story arches, the one of Jin-Il and his friends, the one of karaoke bar own Huyng-Suk and the one of Sung-Hoon who has a grudge against Jin-Il after having gone to prison. Yeah, the storylines are nicely interwoven, but you never really get to submerge and delve deeply into any of the three storylines, which is a shame, because the movie could have benefitted by adding a bit more in-depth to the characters.

There is a good amount of action throughout the course of "Doo Namja", which seems rather real, as it is nicely shot and rather nicely executed on the screen. This definitely adds to the tough atmosphere that permeates the movie.

All in all, then "Doo Namja" is a watchable enough movie. I doubt that I will ever return to watch "Doo Namja" a second time, however.

My rating of this 2016 crime action movie lands on a five out of ten stars.

If you want to watch this movie as part of the still relatively small catalogue of the slightly trending actor Dong-seok Ma (often playing a charismatic tough guy), you are likely to be disappointed and very bored. The movie is mostly about personality-less and rather pathetic teenagers (though I suppose they are partly supposed to be 20, or "college-age"), whereas Dong-seok Ma plays an unsympathetic tough guy, pressuring them into work and this and that. Completely uninteresting, without any likeable characters or actors (the movie made me realize how utterly personality-less teenagers are), slightly hypocritical advertising (see the movie poster).