Year Released: 2014

Genre: Thriller

Main Cast: Ma Dong Seok, Kim Yeong Min, Lee I Kyong, Jo Dong In, Teo, and Ahn Ji Hye

Review

Oh. My. God. Do NOT watch this if you have a weak stomach, don’t like violence, need happy endings… this movie is definitely not for the faint of heart.

I have been obsessing over Ma Dong Seok for the past week and have been trying to watch everything he’s been in. I was surprised to find One On One since it was released this year. Without even thinking about it, I pushed play.

Wow.

The movie is about a group of 7 people called “The Shadows”. They go after 7 suspects who are accused of murdering a high school student. How they go about getting the confessions is brutal.

They beat the crap out of them. I mean to the point where I had to close my eyes and take off my headphones for a bit while it was happening.  I mean, they were doing real creative stuff,  like crushing body parts with hammers and putting their feet in one of those things where you turn the handle and it squeezes shut? Yes, that.

Brutal.

I understand that what they were doing was what they considered their job but what I don’t understand was why? There was a girl (one of the Shadows) who got beat up by her boyfriend almost every day. She never told her crew to take him out. Surely the Shadow leader knew about it.

And what was up with the Shadow leader? I love Ma Dong Seok as I said earlier, but I could not figure his character out. Why was he going through all this trouble? What the hell made him so angry? I mean this man had some serious rage issues. So much to the point that some of the other shadows decided they didn’t want to be apart of what was happening anymore.

He didn’t really try to stop him. Some mess went down (no spoilers) and I guess they realized this wasn’t a game. So they walked away.

Final Thoughts

I tried to like this One On One, I really did but I didn’t. It wasn’t the brutality, it was just too…. random. There wasn’t a sense of accomplishment at the end of the movie. There was no happy ending. I never even found out why this group of Shadows were together in the first place (except maybe because they all had rage issues).

One thing I did like was the exchange Ma Dong Seok’s character did with one of the other Shadows in English. The subs were off (but obviously I didn’t need them). I was pleasantly surprised by how well they spoke but the content of the conversation was what got me.

Have you seen the movie yet? Maybe I should try to watch it again and see if I can like it any better. If you’ve seen it, let me know in the comments what you think!