The dawn of the 1980s marked a time of great chaos in South Korea. President Park Chung Hee, who ruled the country with an iron fist for over 17 years, had recently been assassinated. Another dictator, military strongman Chun Doo-hwan, quickly seized control in a coup d'état and began cracking down on pro-democracy movements composed of students and other South Korean citizens who stood up against his tyranny.
Director Hun Jang’s 2017 humbly titled film “A Taxi Driver” is a dramatization of real events that transpired in 1980. It’s mainly focused on the titular character, a taxi driver named Kim Man-seob (Song Kang-ho), but also on an intrepid West German journalist, Jürgen Hinzpeter (Thomas Kretschmann).
Things kick off in the sprawling South Korean capital of Seoul, where Kim ekes out a marginal existence as a cabby. We learn that he’s a widower and now dotes on his young daughter, Kim Eun-jeong (Eun-mi Yoo).
