Spoilers ahead.

In the spring of 1980 in South Korea, martial law was put in place and Chun Doo-hwan took the title of military dictator after a successful coup d’état.

The very next day, a nine-day revolt commenced in response to student demonstrators being pummelled and killed. It is estimated that within this period up to 2,300 people lost their lives, either for the cause or simply for getting caught in the crossfire.

The heroic efforts of one Jürgen Hinzpeter, the German journalist who filmed and reported on the horrors that took place in Gwangju during the uprising, and of Kim Sa-bok, the taxi driver who snuck him in and out of the city, have been wonderfully immortalised in A Taxi Driver (2017, by Jang Hoon).

You could be easily deceived by the cheery poster into thinking that what you’re about to watch is over two hours of lighthearted fun. What the film itself depicts, however, is far from fun. The ruse persists for the majority of the relaxed and comedic first act, whereafter the second act gives us a sudden change in mood and leaves us with little to laugh about as we follow our protagonists’ arrival in Gwangju.

This dramatised telling of the events that took place in Gwangju during the uprising features superb performances from Song Kang-ho, who plays Sa-bok (Kim Man-seob in the movie), and Thomas Kretschmann as Hinzpeter (referred to as Peter for the majority of the film).

Man-seob has the air and attitude of a man whose world is nothing less than sunshine and roses year-round. He is, however, a recently widowed single father who is four months late on rent and losing more and more customers by the day due to protests and strikes in response to the aforementioned coup d’état and the closing of schools.

He goes as far as to ask his landlord to lend him money in order to pay his rent. His luck finally begins to turn as word starts spreading among the taxi drivers about a foreigner who is willing to pay good money for a ride to Gwangju. In all his hurry to get to the client before anyone else, Man-seob fails to hear about the man’s mission – and profession. Obliviously, he heads for Gwangju with an uptight Peter in the backseat.

Once they reach Gwangju, Man-seob slowly starts grasping the severity of Peter’s mission and the two witness unspeakable acts done to the protestors by the trigger-happy soldiers. A series of heated arguments and misunderstandings lead us to an intense chase scene, in which Man-seob very nearly gets killed, but by this point, the curt Peter has managed to find some redeeming qualities within himself and saves his life.

The next morning sees Man-seob’s departure from Gwangju as his need to get back to his daughter reaches a point beyond tolerance. After a quick change of heart, however, he goes back to the epicentre of the revolt to help his newly found friends.

He returns to Peter and a bloody hospital lined with bodies. It is at this moment that Peter’s courage starts to momentarily falter and tears start to dampen the eyepiece of his viewfinder. It is Man-seob, the man who was just about to leave the city behind, who encourages Peter to push through. And so the pair, along with the local taxi drivers, heads to town only to witness the dire situation intensify before their very eyes. Unarmed protesters, whether they are wounded and being carried out on stretchers or waving a white flag, are shot without hesitation.

The taxi drivers unite and manage to save a handful of the injured but the overpowered soldiers carry on with their senseless killing. Things start to get truly out of control and Man-seob has to get Peter out of Gwangju to save the film.

This is easier said than done, for an entourage of hostile jeeps accompanies the heroes on their great escape. The local taxi drivers unite once again and gallantly sacrifice themselves so that Peter’s film has a safe departure to Germany. In this they succeed – Peter gets on a plane to Japan and ships the film to Germany to be broadcast all over the world.

Just as in the movie, the two never saw each other again in real life. Hinzpeter went on to receive a number of awards for his necessary acts of bravery in Gwangju and reached out to Sa-bok on numerous occasions – to no great avail despite being profoundly keen on reuniting with the taxi driver without whom the footage he captured would have never made it out of Korea.

“I’ll keep waiting” Hinzpeter declares on the real-life footage before the credits. The man’s optimism and determination to find his friend were admirable, to say the least, but Sa-bok died only four years after the Gwangju uprising. Hinzpeter died in 2016.

Such is life – the ending is seldom as cinematic as one would wish. Though they never saw each other again, their legacy lives on in this film in addition to a multitude of different documentaries.

A Taxi Driver represents the unsung heroes that make change where change is needed, behind the curtain, not asking for anything in return.

Edited by Nicole Tilby.