"No Mercy for the Rude" + DVD Giveaway

Killa (played bySin Ha-gyoon) is a man of few words who guns for the big bucks by working as an assassin. Killa likes to think of himself as cool, and even has a bunch of assassin friends who have little presence in "No Mercy for the Rude" except to establish one essential point- that assassins are goofy dorks who overestimate the extent to which their unusual job choice actually makes them interesting. As a film critic, I can appreciate the sentiment.

Anyway, the plot. Well, eventually a job goes wrong and Killa makes enemies. Although the more relevant influence on Killa's daily life is an unnamed woman (played byYoon Ji-hye). She's a bit of a predator. Killa ends up just tacitly acquiescing to her sexual assaults, because saying no goes against his moral principles of never saying anything, which means she gets to interpret any obvious implied no as a yes.

There's also an unnamed boy (played byKang San), who either lacks parents or lacks reliable parents- can't remember which. The point is, the boy is a positive influence on Killa and Killa's girlfriend in the sense that they are somewhat less likely to reenforce their weird and creepy personal dynamics in front of a young impressionable boy. Does that make a real family? Well no not really but let's pretend it does for the sake of argument or else this movie will make even less structural sense.

You may have noticed that throughout this review I've been writing a lot of sentences that appear to be serious yet they're describing such bizarre ideas that they do in fact more closely resemble jokes. That's pretty much the tone "No Mercy for the Rude" is going for too. Take the title. Killa has taken an oath to try and only kill people who deserve it, which is less difficult than it sounds once you remember that hey, when you think about it, are any of us really innocent?

"No Mercy for the Rude" is a weird movie to look at in retrospect because it's a reminder of the whole "quirky assassin" subgenre of film that was, in fact, an entire subgenre of film at one point because it seemed like everyone was making them. I blame Hong Kong- although in all fairness "No Mercy for the Rude" is also a sort of reminder of a more innocent time, when we were obviously supposed to find it strange that the main character is excessively self-referential. It's not a cute quirk- most of these characters are mentally ill and that's not funny.

Except that it is funny...well, sometimes anyway, just not in huge doses. "No Mercy for the Rude" is a very weird movie mainly because it tries the best it can to take place in the real world, where people only start overthinking when there's nothing more important to do. Does that much make "No Mercy for the Rude" a genuinely good movie? It's not great, and in large perspective the quirkiness suffers somewhat from the mere existence of a whole genre of almost-parody assassin movies. All the same, it's probably worth watching once.

Review by William Schwartz

"No Mercy for the Rude" is directed byPark Cheol-heeand featuresSin Ha-gyoon,Yoon Ji-hyeandKang San.

No Mercy for the Rude DVD