At first glance one may mistake this movie for that of Martin Scoresse’s Taxi Driver (1976), starring Robert Deniro. But A Taxi Driver, directed by Jang Hoon and written by Eom Yu-na, is a completely different movie from the neo-noir story set in New York City. Instead, this story takes place in the distant Republic of Korea yet does not take place in the bright democracy that it is known for today, but the anti-communist dictatorship it had in 1980. A Taxi Driver follows its protagonist, Kim Sa-bok, played by the wonderful Song Kang-ho, who is a taxi driver from Seoul and takes on a job to transport a German journalist, Jürgen Hinzpeter, played by Thomas Kretschmann, to the city of Gwangju to cover the mass student protests taking place in the city. During this time the city of Gwangju is under military occupation by the authoritarian government of South Korea for its massive protests of mostly college students, and any press or information coming out of the city is suppressed. It is up to these two men and the many others in Gwangju to get the news out not just in South Korea, but to the world at the risk of their own lives.

A Taxi Driver is by no means a blissful movie. The film does a fantastic job of forcing the audience to take part in the viewing of the brutality inflicted upon the many protesters as their banners, signs, and shouts are met with tear gas, nightsticks, and gunfire from soldiers, but manages to include some breaks of humanity in the chaos of its violence. With a critic score of 97% and an audience score of 83% on Rotten Tomatoes, A Taxi Driver is a movie worth your time and can inform you about some history and even possibly make you cry.