Kim has only a few words of English, so translations and explanation are difficult, the language gap exacerbated by the difference in the ways they see and understand the world. His appearance makes him an obvious outsider and he doesn't speak Korean. His fare is German journalist Peter (played by Thomas Kretschmann and based on Jürgen Hinzpeter), who is posing as a missionary, and sometimes as a businessman, in an attempt to get inside the city where no foreign media representatives are allowed and even the local press is subject to aggressive controls. He doesn't really know what the foreigner is there for and he's startled when they encounter an army road block, but whilst his fare has some mysterious high-minded agenda, what he's concerned with is paying off his landlord and buying his kid some new shoes. When, one day, he hears about a foreigner offering a really big fare to travel all the way from Seoul to Gwangju and back again, he leaps at the opportunity. A widower who is behind with his rent and has an 11 year old daughter to worry about, he spends all the hours he can behind the wheel of his ageing but much-loved green cab, trying to make ends meet. The result was escalation and the cutting-off of the city so that nobody elsewhere in the country knew what was going on.Ī Taxi Driver follows Kim Man-seob (played by Song Kang-ho and based on the real life Kim Sa-bok), a man who doesn't pay much attention to the news anyway. When students protesting at the closure of their universities and demanding democracy where fired on by troops, people from all backgrounds spilled out onto the streets. People in the prosperous southern region of Jeolla objected to his sudden imposition of martial law, which they had been exempt from before. The country's president, Park Chung-hee, had been assassinated in October of the previous year and General Chun Doo-hwan had seized control of the military two months later. But I also think it lacked more punch.In May 1980, serious trouble was brewing in the South Korean city of Gwangju. I mean his character is 100% relevant, but in terms of acting, the film belongs to Song Kang-ho Also, even though the film is a tribute to the reporter, and what he did, his story is ultimately anecdotal in front of the terrible event that he was reporting, and despite not trivializing what happened there in any way, I feel that the creators preferred not to be so openly critical, and perhaps it was necessary because from what I understand, they were harassed by the government during the filming. Thomas Kretschmann plays Jürgen Hinzpeter, but the truth is that he doesn't have much to do. That's not a negative criticism of Song Kang-ho's work, but let's just say the script doesn't allow him much. However the transition that is made to develop the character of Song Kang-ho - the taxi driver - doesn't feel the most fitting. This film portrays the events faithfully up to a point, and evidently fictionalizes others. Since Jürgen Hinzpeter was driven in and out of city of Gwangju with the same taxi driver who helped him during the time that he was in the city recording the incidents that occurred there. Now that's the background to other real story. Citizens were violently repressed, and it's estimated that more than 2000 people were killed by the military. The development of events narrates journalist Jürgen Hinzpeter's trip to South Korea to report and demonstrate to the world what was happening with the Gwangju Uprising that occurred in May 1980, during which citizens rose up against the then president Chun Doo- hwan and oppose his dictatorship. A Taxi Driver tells a true story, as well as taking place in a real historical event. The development of events narrates journalist Jürgen One of the blackest pages in the South Korea that eventually rose to democracy is portrayed in this well-intentioned but not so thoughtful film. One of the blackest pages in the South Korea that eventually rose to democracy is portrayed in this well-intentioned but not so thoughtful film.

A taxi driver 2017 movie