“Unbowed” is based on the true story of Kim Myung-ho, a math professor who was arrested and prosecuted for shooting judge Park Hong-woo with a crossbow .
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The movie starts with the aforementioned incident. We witness math professor named Kim Kyung-ho (Ahn Sung-ki) holding a crossbow in front of the building's entrance of Judge Park Bong-joo's (Kim Eung-soo) home. When Judge Park Bong-joo arrives at his home, Kim Kyung-ho confronts him and threatens him with the crossbow, demanding an apology for not following the law. The two men start to fight and Kim Kyung-ho is arrested and prosecuted for allegedly shooting Judge Park Bong-joo.
After these events, Kim Kyung-ho's wife (Na Young-hee) finds lawyer Park Joon (Park Won-sang) following her husband's request and asks him to represent him in the court. From their meeting, we learn that in 1995, Kim Kyung-ho pointed out a mistake that his colleague made in a math question of their University's entrance exam and he wanted to disclose the error to the students. But the University's representatives had different thoughts, a dispute was raised and the next year the University denied Kim Kyung-ho's full-tenure despite being a brilliant professor. Afte losing a legal battle with the University, Kim migrated to the United States, but when he learned from the newspaper that a new law passed that allows rejected professors to apply for re-evaluation and proceed to lawsuits for wrongful professorship dismissal, he returned to South Korea. For one more time he lost the lawsuit and in 2007 he proceeded to appeal, but Judge Park Bong-joo turned down Kim Kyung-ho's appeal and this led Kim Kyung-ho in front of Judge Park Bong-joo's house, holding the crossbow.
During the above conversation, Kim Kyung-ho's wife notices Lawyer Park Joon's alcoholic tendencies and changes her mind for appointing him. Regardless, Kim Kyung-ho's trial for injuring Park Bong-joo proceeds with another lawyer, but Kim Kyung-ho, frustrated by the judge, objects the trial and fires his lawyer. Now being in prison, he files for another appeal with a new lawyer. This new lawyer is non-other than Lawyer Park Joon who was recommended by journalist Jang Eun-seo (Kim Ji-ho) to Kim Kyung-ho's wife. The two men, despite their initial ideological differences, fight together to prove that Kim Kyung-ho did not shoot the crossbow.
Kim Kyung-ho, from the first moments of the film and all its duration appears to be utterly rightful and to follow the rules. In these terms, it comes as a surprise how this uptight professor chose to frighten the judge using a crossbow and did not try to find his right by following the law. Only later he appears to extensively study the law, showing how meticulous he is.
Nevertheless, the film is clearly on the side of Kim Kyung-ho, especially in terms of the abuse of power by the judges. There is only one occasion where this favoritism diminishes. This is the parallelism between the intention Kim Kyung-ho to scare judge Park Hong-woo with the crossbow and the intention of married lawyer Park Joon while drunk to sleep with journalist Jang Eun-seo. In the case of Park, he wakes-up and realises that nothing has happened with Jang, and then he seems to be disappointed for this instead of being regretful. On the other hand, in the case of professor Kim Kyung-ho as he suggests, he only intended to scare the judge and not harm him. So, in both cases there is an underlying intention to mistreat someone. It's not clear if this parallelism is intentional by writer Chung Ji-young in order to achieve some skepticism regarding the intentions of the professor. Regardless, it's worth highlighting this scene and putting the question: ‘'Does only the final result matter or also the thought?”
Chung Ji-young's directing and the editing by the duo Kim Sang-beom and Kim Jae-beom really stand out in the scenes where the camera rapidly shifts during the trials from one person to another and in this fashion, they enhance the tension. Furthermore, Ahn Sung-ki is very good in his role as Professor Kim Kyeong-ho and he won several awards as best actor. Still, the one that stands out with his natural acting is Park Won-sang as Park Joon. He is exceptional and shines both in the courtroom as determined lawyer and outside the courtroom with his funny scenes.
“Unbowed” is a film fairly without surprises minus one scene in the cell. This rough scene catches the viewer by surprise and seems misplaced when one takes account of the general aesthetics of the film. It feels as its only purpose is to add the shock factor. Nonetheless, “Unbowed” is one of the rare Korean courtroom movies that is embodied with many clever dialogues and this makes it a worth-watching movie.
