General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

One on One (일대일)

One on One (일대일, Ildaeil) is a 2014 South Korean revenge drama directed, written, photographed, and edited by Kim Ki-duk, in which a seven-member vigilante group called the Shadows abducts and tortures the seven men responsible for the murder of a high school girl. It premiered as the opening film of the Venice Days section of the 71st Venice International Film Festival, where it won the FEDEORA Best Film award, and it was released in South Korea on May 22, 2014.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Director / writer	Kim Ki-duk, who also served as cinematographer and editor; his 20th feature film¹
Release	May 22, 2014, South Korea; 122 minutes; drama; rated 18+ (청소년 관람불가)¹^•³
Premise	On May 9 a female high school student is brutally murdered; seven suspects are hunted one by one by the seven-member terror group "Shadow"¹
Lead cast	Ma Dong-seok (Shadow Leader), Kim Young-min (Oh-hyun), Lee Yi-kyung (Shadow 1), with Ahn Ji-hye, Yoo Teo, and Park So-dam in supporting roles³
Festival honor	FEDEORA Best Film award, Venice Days, 71st Venice International Film Festival (2014)²
Production	Kim Ki Duk Film; producer Kim Soon-mo; filmed February 28 to March 11, 2014¹^•⁴
South Korean box office	53 screens, 10,142 admissions, total gross about $57,138⁴

Spoilers

Plot

The film opens with the murder of a high school girl by a gang of seven masked men. In the aftermath, a small group of citizens forms a vigilante group calling itself the Shadows and hunts down everyone involved in her death. The suspects are abducted, tortured with methods including rusty nails, hammers, pincers, and electrocution, and forced to sign confessions; the torturers stop once each perpetrator admits his part in the plot and releases him to live with his shame.⁵^•⁶

The abductions begin with low-level underlings and move up a chain of command toward the top of a web of gangsters and officials. The suspects offer different justifications: some say they were only following orders, others that the act served the common good, and those at the top that it was a just action whose motives are never conclusively revealed.⁶ One abducted man, tortured and forced to write a confession, later learns that other assailants have also been abducted and tortured and some have committed suicide; growing suspicious of his abductors, he tails the next victim and discovers their hideout.⁴

The two groups of seven are drawn as mirror images. The perpetrators are successful, well-to-do people caught in a hierarchical system, while the vigilantes are mostly working-class people disadvantaged by the economy, some living in poverty; one saves money for his wife's medical treatment while fending off loan sharks.⁷ The Shadows also change costumes for each abduction, dressing as paratroopers, police, US Army soldiers, national intelligence agents, gangsters, and street cleaners, exceeding the violence of the authorities they impersonate.⁸^•⁹

Production

Kim Ki-duk wrote, directed, produced the investment for, photographed, and edited the film, working with producer Kim Soon-mo and line producer Hong Seong-eun at his company Kim Ki Duk Film.⁴ Filming ran from February 28 to March 11, 2014, a schedule of about ten shooting days that reviewers noted repeatedly; the director reportedly rewrote the script each night for the next day's scenes.¹^•¹⁰

Ma Dong-seok, a longtime supporting actor, took the lead as the Shadow Leader, his second major role in a Kim Ki-duk film after An Actor Is an Actor; Kim Young-min, who had worked with the director on The Coast Guard and Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring, played the suspect Oh-hyun in multiple roles.⁵^•⁸

Venice and reception

One on One opened the 11th Venice Days sidebar at the 71st Venice International Film Festival and closed the section on September 6, 2014 with the FEDEORA Best Film award, a result the Korean Film Council noted as meaningful because European auteur films had dominated the section previously.² It was Kim Ki-duk's third consecutive Venice appearance, after winning the Golden Lion for Pieta in 2012 and screening Moebius out of competition in 2013.² After the award he described the film as "story about ordinary people standing up against corruption of power."

The film then circulated widely on the festival circuit, with invitations to Busan (Korean Cinema Today-Panorama), Toronto-adjacent special screenings at Tokyo FILMeX, the Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival's Master Class, Sitges, Rio de Janeiro, Kerala, Mumbai, and Singapore in 2014, and Florence, Yubari, and Fantasporto in 2015.⁴

Critical response was divided. Reviewers found the social commentary on cronyism, hierarchy, and inequality in South Korea apt but bluntly delivered, and the rushed production showed in functional handheld photography and under-rehearsed dialogue; Pierce Conran, writing at the Busan festival, called it one of the director's least satisfying outings.⁹ Others read it more generously as an allegory on the echoes of state violence and collective guilt, in which culprits at different points of the chain of command give different explanations for unforgivable crimes.⁶ On Cine21, three professional critics averaged 6.33 out of 10 and registered audiences 6.25.³

Themes and the director's statement

Kim Ki-duk framed the film as a statement about contemporary South Korea, where he saw corruption being treated as an ability rather than a negative force. In a statement dated April 18, 2014, he wrote that he began the screenplay by confessing "I too am a coward," and that the murdered schoolgirl, named Oh Min-ju in the film, stands for whatever each viewer has seen destroyed; he asked audiences to identify their own "Oh Min-ju" before judging the ending.³ The London Korean Film Festival noted that the film is loosely based on a real event and that the director wanted to ask himself and his audience "Who am I?" and what role each person plays in stopping such acts.⁵

The film retains several of Kim's recurring elements, including graphic violence, Christianity in its themes of guilt and revenge, and Buddhism in the self-isolation and meditation practiced by the Shadow Leader, while dropping his better-known near-silent style in favor of plot-heavy dialogue.¹¹ Despite the FEDEORA award and festival visibility abroad, its South Korean theatrical run was small: 53 screens and 10,142 admissions.⁴

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Drama and biographical films (individual works) › Drama films 2010 to 2014 › Psychological and social drama films

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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