(The Pictures with a View)

Chae Ji-eun (Shin Hyun-bin)’s small fridge will not stop burping out the frozen remains of the rapist she mutilated. She had accidentally taken the thug’s life while resisting his assault, and by a chain of badly timed events, she involuntarily and voluntarily transforms from a victim to an avenger.

Once a high school shooting sport prodigy, Ji-eun’s life tailspinned after a tragic car accident that robbed her of parents and left her with language impairment. Her adult life is reduced to doing manual labor at a textile factory, but even while disadvantaged and vulnerable, Ji-eun still aspires for a better life as a game designer.

(The Pictures with a View)

The problem is that none of the men in her life are civil. From the factory head who coerces sex in return for promotion, the three heinous men who rape her in the backstreets, the corrupt cop who accuses her of false report and demands that she pays him to avoid being penalized, Ji-eun is helplessly cornered -- until she decides to take matters in to her own hands.

With a pistol she acquires from the cop, her second unintended prey, Ji-eun sets out to hunt down the men who have wronged her and those near her. By the time she takes out her best friend’s abusive boyfriend, she knows there is no turning back. The futility of her single-handed revenge is accentuated, however, when she faces two other rapists who fail to recognize her when they face death.

(The Pictures with a View)

Debuting director Ahn Yong-hoon, who personally appears in the film as one of the supporting actors, explains that “The Lost Choices” is “not necessarily what we want to say or what you want to hear, but what needs to be addressed for the society.”

“What’s a raped woman’s attitude supposed to be like?”, “You should live to tell the world of how lonely and scared you were, and how much you wanted to live just an ordinary life,” the words of Kang Ja-gyeom (Yoon So-yi), the female cop who tries in vain to help Ji-eun, reflects the silent cries of the victims of sex crimes in South Korea.

“The Lost Choices” will open nationwide in Korea on Oct. 29.

By Lim Jeong-yeo (kaylalim@heraldcorp.com)