Nocturnal

Broken in all the right places

# Nocturnal (2025) Review: Broken in all the right places

**Spoiler warning ahead. Proceed only if you've already watched—or don't mind being broken wide open.**

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## A title lost in translation

There’s something quietly frustrating about mismatched titles. The Korean name for this film, 브로큰 (beurokeun)—Broken—says everything it needs to. It’s raw. It’s thematic. It’s accurate.

And then came Nocturnal. Elegant, perhaps, even poetic. But Nocturnal is the name of a novel within the story, not the story itself. A choice that, while likely made for international appeal, ends up setting the wrong tone and wrong expectations.

If you go in expecting a moody thriller about late-night brooding, you’ll come out thinking the third act forgot to arrive. If they had kept the English title as Broken, the story, pacing, and ending would’ve made more sense.

## Acting and atmosphere

For what it is—a revenge thriller—the film delivers. Solid performances all around, led by an actor who wears his role like it’s grown into his bones—a notorious gangster who had already left that life behind but is forced to return after the death of his younger brother.

It gives off the same energy as John Wick—feared, respected, tried to live a normal life, but got dragged back in. Except instead of a dog, it was his sibling.

The cinematography fits the tone: mysterious, crime, gritty, and fitting for a revenge plot. No complaints there.

## Final thoughts

> When mislabeling ruins the mood

The tragedy here isn’t just in the story—it’s in the mismatch between title and tone. International viewers might be left confused by the final scene. There is a sense of something settling, but it’s jagged and unsatisfying—because it was never meant to be about closure. It was about being Broken.

If they had just stuck with Broken, the pieces would’ve come together. Instead, we’re left with a film that feels unfinished, incomplete—not by design, but by branding.

Rating: 5 out of 10 stars (8 if you pretend the title was Broken all along)

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- License: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC By-SA) 4.0 International
- By: Yohan Yukiya Sese Cuneta 사요한 (YourOnly.One)
- Date: 2025-05-26

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Red Herring: The Movie. This is pretty much dog's crap

A scummy dude gets killed; his equally scummy brother - but with pathological violence issues, instead of being a crack-head wife-beater - sets out to find the killer and hand out a miscarriage of justice.

I'm all for revenge flicks, vigilante flicks, thrillers... I don't like violence, but it can fun when it's unrealistic, and conveys the sense of urgency when it's done right. Here, the violence is because all the main characters are scum of the Earth and don't know how to do - and probably aren't even much good at - anything else.
Obviously then, we don't have a good motive to cheer for the lead in his quest, nor can we support him, since he's an epic arse-hole.

The plot is an absolute mess too!
The first 6 minutes were mindless flashes and people not even introduced properly, in a student-like montage. It was a very bad sign and, unfortunately, the rest of the story barely progressed.
We had a writer character in the film just to prove am insipid, stupid distraction, a missing woman we never got to know or really care about, some fight scenes which were not fun, but, where not overly brutal (thankfully), did a good job in turning me off of the main character, and dull dialogues, as everyone walked around not much giving a toss, and being too secretive or thinking they're too cool to have any real conversations.

Honestly: there's nothing to recommend and I'm gutted that I wasted an hour and 40 minutes watching this, instead of something else.

Don't make the same mistake.

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