The audience is subjected to a series of emotional contortions, encouraged to experience them like a voyeur, and then scolded for doing so.

| Feb 8, 2010

It's difficult to watch and even more difficult to understand, but the intriguing material is generally well-crafted.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 18, 2005

His fascination with allegory and symbols is evident here, too, but his narrative strays too far from the dreamlike towards the just plain dumbfounding.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Apr 15, 2005

The film is filled with lovely images (Kim studied painting in France), and ultimately becomes, against all expectations, quite moving.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Apr 15, 2005

Its international reputation seems difficult to justify.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/4 | Mar 18, 2005

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

Full Review | Original Score: C- | Feb 23, 2005

Becomes more and more confused, unpleasant and preposterous.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/4 | Feb 18, 2005

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

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/4 | Feb 18, 2005

Mostly distressing and occasionally compelling, as Sun-hwa, the young student, becomes ensnared in a prostitution ring.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Feb 17, 2005

Though it goes on exactly a reel too long, Bad Guy reps the most emotionally satisfying pic to date by Korean iconoclast Kim Ki-duk.

| Feb 17, 2005

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.

Full Review | Feb 15, 2005

Realism isn't the focal point of Bad Guy-misogynistic male power fantasies masquerading as dark, dreamlike treatises on fate and love are.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Feb 9, 2005

Although the set-up strains the audience's disbelief, the mournful style -- complete with a downbeat soundtrack reminiscent of triphop crooners Portishead -- and meandering pace give this tale an unusual, near surreal, edge.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 7, 2003