3-Iron (빈집 / Bin-jip, "Empty House") is a 2004 film from Korea directed by Kim Ki Duk.
Tae-suk is a young man who apparently has a menial job hanging advertising fliers on doorknobs. He uses his job as a means of indulging his hobby. Tae-suk circles back to the houses where he hangs fliers, and, if the fliers are still on the doorknobs and thus indicating that no one has come home, he breaks in. He isn't a thief; apart from eating and drinking out of fridges and liquor cabinets, he never takes anything from the places he enters. He simply takes selfies, enjoys himself for a while, and then leaves.
One day he breaks into a house that, it turns out, isn't empty. Inside the house is Sun-hwa, a former model who is married to a man that abuses her—when Tae-suk sees Sun-hwa, she has a battered face and a split lip. Tae-suk leaves, but feels compelled to come back. He arrives just as Sun-hwa's monstrous husband Min-gyu seems about to rape her. Despite just having met her moments before, Tae-suk rescues Sun-hwa from her horrible husband. She then joins him in his life of breaking and entering.
Tropes:
- Chekhov's Gun: Tae-suk's habit of taking selfies in the houses he breaks into, usually posing next to family portraits. After he and Sun-hwa are arrested, this allows the police to trace every break-in he's made.
- Chekhov's Skill: Tae-suk and Sun-hwa break into the home of a boxer, as shown by the boxing gloves hanging and the big picture of the man in boxing gear. Unfortunately for Tae-suk that man comes home, catches them, puts on his gloves, and gives Tae-suk a beating.
- Conscience Makes You Go Back: Tae-suk's first reaction when he realizes that a woman is in the house is to make a quick exit. But he has seen Sun-hwa's battered face. He winds up doing a U-turn and going back and rescuing her from her husband.
- Death Glare: Min-gyu, a man filled with rage, has a habit of doing this. He does this early in the film, before he even knows who Tae-suk is, because Tae-suk's motorcycle is parked in front of his garage.
- Domestic Abuse: Min-gyu beats his wife. When she takes off with Tae-suk she has a split lip and a badly bruised face.
- The Drifter: Tae-suk gets along by breaking into homes that are empty and temporarily unoccupied. He does not steal from the homes like any typical run-of-the-mill burglar. In a bizarre, parasitic manner, he lives off the food resources and physical amenities provided by the homes, yet leaves them in a better state than when he first broke in, repairing damaged appliances and washing dirty clothing thrown around by the owners.
- Due to the Dead: Tae-suk and Sun-hwa break into a home only to find an older man dead on the floor. Do they ignore the body? No. Do they back out and make an anonymous call to Korean 911? No. Instead they bury him, complete with a coffin and a proper Korean funeral shroud, before setting in to live in the house like they usually do.
- Enemy Eats Your Lunch: Tae-suk doesn't steal anything from the homes he breaks into, but he is in the habit of helping himself to whatever is in the kitchen.
- Gainax Ending: Tae-suk begins practicing the art of stealth in his cell, and refines his skills to the point where he seems to be able to become invisible. Finally he returns to Min-gyu and Sun-hwa's home. He's gotten so good at stealth that Min-gyu does not notice him when Tae-suk is standing directly behind him, just inches away. In one memorable shot Sun-hwa embraces her husband so that she can kiss Tae-suk, who is standing right behind him. Min-gyu leaves and Tae-suk and Sun-hwa embrace. The last shot shows the two of them standing together on a scale, which reads zero kilograms. If that's not odd enough, that shot is accompanied by a closing title that says, in both English and Korean, "It's hard to tell that the world we live in is either a reality or a dream." It's left completely ambiguous as to whether the ending is depicting reality, or possibly a Sun-hwa Imagine Spot where she imagines her lover has come back for her, or possibly even Tae-suk imagining her.
- Handy Cuffs: After Min-gyu gives the sleazy detective a bribe, the detective brings a handcuffed Tae-suk to him and allows Min-gyu to hit golf balls at him, like Tae-suk did when rescuing Sun-hwa. Unfortunately for the detective, he handcuffed Tae-suk with his hands in front, which allows Tae-suk to assault the detective and try to strangle him. The detective's partner pulls Tae-suk off and Tae-suk goes to jail.
- Important Haircut: Sun-hwa hands Tae-suk a pair of scissors and he cuts her hair. He gives her a perfectly ordinary haircut, but the gesture seems to be an expression of trust.
- Locked Room Mystery: A plot point. Tae-suk uses some sort of stealth technique to fool the prison warden into believing he wasn't actually there in his cell.
- Match Cut: A closeup of Tae-suk's feet, as he begins practicing his invisibility skills, cuts to a closeup of Sun-hwa's feet as she stands on a scale.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Tae-suk is on a Seoul street, doing that thing he does where he practices his golf swing by hitting a ball tied to a tree. Unfortunately the loop he tied breaks, the golf ball goes flying off, the golf ball smashes through the windshield of a car, and the golf ball severely injures a woman sitting in the car. Afterwards Tae-suk is beside himself, weeping in shame and horror as Sun-hwa tries to comfort him.
- P.O.V. Cam: Several shots from Tae-suk's POV as Tae-suk, who seems to have gained the power to make himself invisible, returns to the various houses he creeped around before.
- Reveal Shot: Tae-suk has broken into a rather fancy house and is doing his usual look-around. As he peers through a doorway, the camera pans down and left to reveal Sun-hwa, curled up in a fetal position against the wall, where he can't see her.
- Scenery Censor: Tae-suk reads a nudie magazine while lounging in the bathtub, the magazine carefully placed to hide his privates. He actually holds the magazine underwater.
- Shower Scene: A little fanservice early in the film, showing Tae-suk showering in the shower of an apartment he has broken into.
- Silence Is Golden: The two main characters. Other characters talk quite a bit, like Min-gyu or the sleazy cop that arrests Tae-suk, but together Tae-suk and Sun-hwa combine for two lines of dialogue, both by Sun-hwa and both in the final scene of the movie.
- Visual Title Drop: Tae-suk is a golfer. He subdues Min-gyu by hitting golf balls at him with a 3-iron before taking off with Sun-hwa. Tae-suk is also in the habit of practicing his swing by swinging the 3-iron and hitting a ball that he has tied to a tree.
