Kim Ki-Duk is an interesting Korean movie maker when it comes to creating controversy. His in-depth observation of the Korean society often irritated the Korean establishment. Almost all of his movies were received with frustration and rejection in his native country, he even considered not releasing any of his work in Korea. On the other hand, Kim is one of the favorites contemporary far-eastern movie makers in Europe and a festival spoiled director, more than Kar-Wai (Hong Kong) and Zhang (China), also very popular in Europe.
He is famous for his minimal dialog, like in the opening scene of 3-iron. His protagonists are eccentric and almost universally isolated, alienated, or even rejected by society.
3-iron is one of his interesting movies, and the most famous in the US. Like in a lot of his movies, his protagonists achieve a state of transcendence, a fantasy state, to cope with the rigid harsh reality. Despite his cheesy sound track on this work: new age classical-like piano in the first, and a romantic Arabic song (a musical motif in the movie) in the second scene, the movie has some smart camera moments and some good suspense moments though they were spoiled at times by scenes that omission would have served better the whole movie.
