A young drifter breaks into people’s houses while they’re away on vacation, but never steals a thing. Instead, he squats for a couple of days and then repays them by doing their laundry, fixing broken electronics, and such. But one day, everything changes when he meets a woman stuck in an abusive marriage. Thus unfolds a bizarre love affair in which neither character ever speaks a word to each other.

Most movies have a “bathroom break” scene. These are brief moments in a film where you can walk away for a few minutes, and then come back without really missing much. 3-IRON, as precious as it may be, is a giant collection of “bathroom break” scenes. Man, I can hear the hate mail now. Then again, I doubt many people are actually going to rent this movie. The people that are, however, will assuredly love it, so I guess they’ll be the ones sending the mail. It is, after all, a “deep and meaningful foreign art-picture” that I just don’t “understand” or “appreciate”.

3-IRON is incredibly interesting without being particularly engaging. There is little to no dialogue (at least with the two leads) and it has barely any music. This would be all fine and dandy, but the problems develop through the lack of emotion, not dialogue. The concept is cool, but bored-looking characters make for a bored-feeling audience. Because of this, the movie seems a whole lot longer than it really is, which is somewhat pathetic since the movie only runs at about 88 minutes. Strange, I thought it was nearly two hours long. I guess time slows down when you’re not being entertained.

On the plus side, the movie contains plenty of quietly bizarre moments that are sure to either make you grin or cringe. In my opinion, they aren’t enough to save the picture, although I do appreciate having seen them. In fact, I’m actually glad I saw this movie, despite my obvious personal issues with it. If you’re even considering renting this, then you’ll probably like it, if not love it. Quite frankly though, I think it’s an overrated bore with plenty of cool concepts, all of which deserve to be in a more engaging movie.

Video: Presented in 1.85:1 Anamorphic Widescreen, Mastered in High Definition. The picture is very clear, but has constant flecks popping up every which way. If you ignore it, it’s not distracting at all, but if you start to focus on it, it becomes somewhat annoying.

Audio: Korean 5.1 Dolby Digital Surround and French 2.0 Surround, with English subtitles. Considering that this is a foreign film with almost no dialogue or music, I see no reason to comment on the audio transfer. I will say this though – there is nothing wrong with all of the “nothingness”.

We only get one extra, but that’s good enough for me. I’m glad to get anything at all.

Commentary (with director Kim Ki-Duk): Obviously, you’ll need to have subtitles to check this extra out, but it’s worth it. The director is highly involved with his movie and tosses out interesting information every chance he gets. Watch it, listen to it, read it, whatever – just check it out.

There are also 9 Previews.

With all of the peculiarly delightful scenes and interesting filmmaking choices, this movie is sure to please all fans of artsy, theme-filled foreign flicks. Unfortunately though, in this particular case, I’m not one of them. I'd say rent it, but only if you don't have an attention span equal to that of a five-year-old.