3-Iron (2004) dir. Ki-duk Kim
This review may not be as coherent as I'd hoped, because I wanted to wait a little bit after seeing it to let it sink in before writing out my thoughts. However, I might've let too much time pass, so forgive the ramblings about to occur.
Regardless, I'll just say outright that there are SPOILERS sprinkled throughout because I wasn't able to articulate my thoughts without including them, and it's not like this is a movie where knowing the plot beforehand would ruin the experience.
Anyways, I'll confess to, when push comes to shove, being a "dialogue guy," in that I'll generally prefer my movies to not be stingy when it comes to words, only so much in that I feel that approach better reflects what I perceive to be more "real," and it's usually easier to connect to something you relate to, while it's tough to relate to a reality where people never talk (hyperbole, yes -- this despite my recent shift into seeking out more movies here or there where I'm more likely to come away with a striking image in my head than I am a juicy quote/line). SO, I'll admit I was fighting this movie a bit at the start, since I kept on wanting the main characters to say more to each other. This is, of course, entirely my own fault, and once I was able to give in so-to-speak, I enjoyed the following proceedings much more. This problematic approach of looking for concrete information ties-in to the final act as well (thankfully, I've made strides in this department). Was he beaten to death in prison, and his ghost just floating about afterwards, or was he actually able to gain the ability to turn himself invisible through a heightened self-consciousness? Either answer is acceptable, though neither essential.
So, what to make of the use of a 3-iron golf club? I did find the parts where it was used for violence to be a bit, well, cheesy, but I did a little digging after watching the movie and found something online which I certainly subscribe to, which is the 3-iron club being symbolic to the 3 main steps of Buddhism: 1) Impermanence, 2) Non-Self, and 3) Nirvana (enlightened existence). We see this play out in the film in a fairly seamless, natural progression.
At first, our protagonist Tae-suk is just drifting from place to place, with no home of his own, and, I'd argue, no real individual sense of self, as he seems to more-or-less just assimilate himself into whatever particular house he is in at that time, only for it all to be erased once he comes upon a new place. Thus, impermanence. The non-self is achieved when he is in prison -- now that he is unable to travel from place-to-place, he is forced to look inward, not outward, for a source of identity. Through peaceful self-reflection and the eschewing of anger, he is able to remove his self/soul from its physical limitations (or is he?), which leads us to stage 3, Nirvana, the enlightened state-of-being, as he is now able to travel through the world in whatever state (physical/metaphysical) he desires, and weighs nothing on a scale. Yes, it's far from a perfect reading (even the original title in Korean was "Empty Houses"), but I like it anyway.
And about that relationship, I think the film's greatest achievement is to have the first words exchanged between our protagonists be "I love you," and for those words to be fully, completely earned -- we don't doubt it for a second, we don't feel the need to mentally backtrack and see if we missed anything, or feel like we are coming in cold to two characters whose history we don't yet know or understand. It really is such an understated, lovely sleight of hand Kim accomplishes there, and it's something I suspect no other movie has ever pulled off so well, if at all.
sidenote: I always hope I'll come away from any film with one image that will really stick with me afterwards, and for
3-Iron it's when he's in his prison cell with that cheeky (no other way to describe it) grin, egging himself on with each of his hands. That whole sequence really is a bit of a curveball in terms of tone. In fact, the entire 3rd act deviates from the first two as well in this sense, but this is more than welcome and serves the film a positive momentum as the conclusion draws near.
So there is a major spoiler alert concerning this next bit of the discussion even though this information might indeed be useful to know for many viewers going into the film. [Spoil] Let's not beat around the bush. What you don't find out until very near the end is that Jax (Nadine Marshall) is indeed pregnant but not by her husband with whom she hasn't had sex in months and months, nor by anybody else for that matter, a point the movie readily concedes. In fact, she fears that she is giving birth to the Second Coming. This late insight explains a lot of her behaviour earlier n the movie. She is tight-lipped, reclusive and worried as hell. She can't really tell her best friend because she would think her crazy. And her homelife, already complicated, gets infinitely more so. Her loving partner Mark (Idris Elba) and their 11-year-old boy, J J, are swept along in the turmoil which eventually leads to a brilliantly shot and devastatingly heart-wrenching confrontation. Mark jumps to wrong conclusions, but how could he not? What would you do if your partner claimed that she got pregnant out of thin air? 
