A Taxi Driver

A Taxi Driver (택시운전사, 2017) is Jang Hoon's Korean historical drama, and you can watch it online on iFILM. Song Kang-ho, one of Korea's most recognizable actors, drives the whole thing.

Seoul, May 1980. Man-seob scrapes by behind the wheel while raising his small daughter alone. A fare lands in his lap that sounds like easy cash: a foreigner will pay well for a run south to Gwangju and back before curfew. The passenger turns out to be German reporter Jürgen Hinzpeter (Thomas Kretschmann), there to film what the country is hiding, the army's brutal crackdown on citizens who rose against military rule. A cabbie who wanted nothing to do with politics that morning spends the night dodging checkpoints with a stranger's camera in his back seat.

The story grows out of a genuine trip and a real driver whose name stayed a mystery for decades. Jang Hoon shapes it as a road movie in which an ordinary man slowly stops looking away. It became a box-office sensation at home and was Korea's submission for the foreign-language Oscar. It hits hardest for viewers drawn to dramas about the small person caught inside enormous events. Stream A Taxi Driver (2017) online on iFILM.