Metacritic reviews

The most emotionally satisfying pic to date by Korean iconoclast Kim Ki-duk.

The film works best as a passionate tale of obsessive love, with two people brought together under harrowing circumstances.

Beautifully shot and lushly scored, this may be one of the least P.C. love stories ever filmed. But it's one of the most deeply felt.

Bad Guy, one of the seven films in Kim's fascinating back catalog, is another kind of cocktail--simple, bitter, served straight and in an unwashed glass.

If there is anything worth discovering in this sad slog of a story, it is the two fierce performances by Cho Je-Hyun and Seo Won, who play the lovers and turn the harsh drama into a showcase for their pained expressions.

The audience is subjected to a series of emotional contortions, encouraged to experience them voyeuristically, and then scolded for doing so. The bathetic music Kim favors is profoundly at odds with his chilly attitude toward the characters.

Certainly offbeat, but not on a level with director Kim's previous work about marginalized people.

Really, who needs a bad guy who's this guilty about being bad?

South Korean director Kim Ki-duk does a bizarre riff on the twisted macho ethos of abusing women until they learn to love you.

Becomes more and more confused, unpleasant and preposterous.