Girl on a Bulldozer, The (2022) Review

“The Girl on a Bulldozer” Theatrical Poster

Director: Park Ri-Woong
Cast: Kim Hye-Yoon, Park Hyuk-Kwon, Oh Man-Seok, Yesung, Choi Hee-Jin, Lee Hwi-Jong, Sung Yeo-Jin, Kim Hee-Chang, Han Hye-Ji, Kim Joong-Ki
Running Time: 112 min. 

By Paul Bramhall

The Korean indie movie has long been the stomping ground of grim and gritty drama’s focusing on societies downtrodden and overlooked, with those focusing on teenage girls almost being its own genre. In the last 10 years alone we’ve had Han Gong-ju, Park Hwa-young, Youngju, Yongsoon, and I’m sure there’s plenty more. In 2022 director and script writer Park Ri-woong made his debut with the curiously titled The Girl on a Bulldozer.

Offering up the first leading role for popular TV actress Kim Hye-yoon (Midnight, The Bad Guys: Reign of Chaos), in TGOAB (as I’ll refer to it from here on in) she plays a troubled 19-year-old with serious anger management issues. In the opening scene we’re introduced to Hye-yoon as the subject of a court hearing, where she narrowly avoids a prison sentence due to her involvement in an assault. In lieu of time spent behind bars, she’s ordered to complete a vocational training course, and opts to learn how to drive a bulldozer, despite the class instructor’s insistence that she’ll never find a job that’s open to women.

While this may sound like a coming-of-age tale that challenges gender stereotypes around the types of jobs women are thought to be best suited for, in reality Hye-yoon’s bulldozer training plays out largely on the periphery (to the extent we only see her get behind the wheel of a bulldozer once in the training setting). We soon learn that Hye-yoon’s home life is far from ideal. Her mother passed away several years ago, and along with her younger brother she now lives in a small divided off area in the Chinese restaurant run by her father, played by Park Hyuk-kwon (The Mimic, A Taxi Driver). He’s heavily in debt and addicted to gambling, so when the police contact Hye-yoon to let her know he drove his car off a bridge and appears to be braindead, the various equally desperate characters who he borrowed money from or made promises to (which included selling off and moving out of the restaurant) start turning to her for answers.

As if the pressure of being constantly harangued to move out and knowing that she and her brother are likely to become orphans isn’t enough, when Hye-yoon decides to visit the site of the accident herself, things don’t add up based on the police findings, and she begins to dig into her father’s past for answers. To that end TGOAB carefully balances elements of both being a thriller and a gritty drama with a level of assurance that belies the fact that it’s a debut directorial work.

Part of what makes it work so well is the powerhouse performance from Hye-yoon. With one arm fully tattooed and an expletive laced outburst never far away, she conveys the tension bubbling from her pent-up rage with a sense of immediacy that feels tangible. Despite cutting a slight figure her anger is indiscriminate in who it targets, be they schoolgirls of a similar age or adults who are twice her size, it quickly becomes easy to see how she landed in court during the opening scene. However with her physical strength lacking the same bite as her tongue, the result often sees her overpowered, and at one point she ends up on the receiving end of the type of beating she’d prefer to be dishing out herself. 

It’s through sheer tenacity that she refuses to give up whenever a hurdle is thrown in the way, a trait born from a sense of injustice and blaming her father for the position they’re in. In this way the title The Girl on a Bulldozer can be seen as metaphorical as well as literal. Hye-yoon’s youth and anger towards society sees her steamrolling her way around Seoul in an attempt to uncover the truth and keep a roof over her and her brother’s heads, with little thought given to if her approach is the best way to find the answers she’s looking for. Her reliance on intimidation sees her frequently take off the white cotton sleeve she wears to cover her full arm tattoo (a cultural trait of Korea, where tattoos are still not as widely socially accepted as they are in the west), but the more deeper she gets, the more she starts to realise it’ll take more than being able to intimidate someone if she and her brother are going to get by in life.

In a way there are parallels that can be drawn to Breathless, Yang Ik-june’s hard hitting 2008 drama in which he also plays a character furious at the world, and in particular his father, before finding some form of redemption through a teenage girl he encounters. Hye-yoon shares a similar outlook, one which she already seems to have resigned herself too, and while her journey is one she walks alone, the way we see her interacting with her younger brother (played by newcomer Park Si-woo) allows the audience some brief glimpses into the young girl hiding behind the tough exterior.

Hye-yoon is not only forced to take on the role of stand-in parent to her younger sibling, but as the narrative progresses and she comes up against an adult world of greed and selfishness, we also witness her gradual realisation that she can’t pin the blame for all of her anger just on her father. It’s this gradual maturity we begin to see seep into her character which eventually sees her anger become focused for the purpose of revenge. Her ultimate act of defiance switches from the metaphorical bulldozer very much into a literal one for a finale which, while it may not necessarily deliver the justice Hye-yoon was looking for, does at least allow her to make a point in a way which is heard loud and clear. 

One of the aspects I enjoyed most in TGOAB is Ri-woong’s decision to resist going into the backstory as to how Hye-yoon came to be the way she is. She’s obviously had a troubled past, but at no point do we learn the origin of her arm length tattoo, nor do we see any of her past run ins with the law. Ri-woon seems to understand that audiences don’t need to be spoon fed, and instead uses the script to subtly incorporate small details which flesh out her character. Hye-yoon’s aunt mentions in passing how she’d previously ran away from home, and while she’s in the police station an officer recognizes her as a regular visitor (in an amusing scene which sees him slap her on the back of the head with a notepad, only for her to reciprocate with a much thicker one), alluding to her past experiences without needing to resort to unnecessary flashback scenes.

So, is TGOAB a coming-of-age story after all? Arguably yes, although not in the way you may expect. In the end the story Ri-woong has crafted isn’t so much about providing a sense of closure around Hyuk-kwon’s accident, or extracting revenge on those who would appear to be responsible for it, so much as it is about someone making peace with the unfair circumstances that life has thrown at them. Here it’s framed from the perspective of a young adult, but it’s a story that resonates with anyone who’s having a hard time through events that are outside of their control. In one of the final scenes Hye-yoon sits behind the steering wheel of the bulldozer, urging it to move forward even though it’s been pushed to its limits. In a way it brings the metaphor full circle, as she comes to accept that no matter how hard she continues to push, there reaches a point when the best thing to do is let go.

Far from being another depressingly bleak and grimy indie flick about Korea’s social woes, TGOAB feels like a refreshingly honest character study, maintaining a sense of realism that paints an unforgiving environment for Hye-yoon to navigate, but never feels like an exercise in misery. As a debut director and script writer Ri-woong marks himself as a talent to look out for it future, and equally Hye-yoon’s performance deserves to be her breakout to bigger and better things. The Girl on a Bulldozer comes highly recommended.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 8/10