Beware of tinkling piano soundtracks in Korean films.  It generally means you are in for a flood of absurd melodrama and damn if this film doesn't have both. There is good melodrama and then there is bad melodrama. Then there is just stupid melodrama. This takes the cake for stupid. Every step of the way. I understand what the director Lee Cheol-ha is trying to do in piling it on thick - a lot of Korean films luxuriate in tragic melodrama - but it has to be smart and somewhat believable. You have to care about the characters to make it work. None of that here.



The female lead is the wonderful Moon Geun-young who was in three excellent films right before this one - the young sister in the brilliant A Tale of Two Sisters and then hit the cute meter out of the park with My Little Bride and Innocent Steps. Here she is rather colorless and an idiot. The male lead is Kim Ju-hyuk who is actually pretty good for his role as a creep but not so good when he reforms. Stick to sleazy villains in the future. None of this is believable but here goes.


Julian (Kim) - that name alone tells you all you need to know. A player with the women and other people's money. He just gets out of jail when he is cornered by a man he owes over 2 million dollars to and is told he has three months to pay it back or he will be killed. Women he is servicing are paying him $1,000 for each encounter so that is a lot of servicing. He gets a call on the phone of his recently dead friend and a lawyer - thinking he talking to the dead friend - tells him that his father has died and he needs to come get his inheritance. It will be split between him and his sister played by Moon. And the dumbness begins. The brother had not seen his sister since his mother took him away as a small boy - so why not pretend to be his dead friend and kill his "sister". No one around her bothers to check him out - like say a driver's license or a birth certificate. They just accept him. And as it happens she is blind. And rich. And kind of obnoxious.


I am thinking this will go in either of two ways - a riff on Wait Until Dark which might be cool in a giant house or  - no please - he begins to fall in love with her. Egads. Did you have to go there. And because that isn't enough, she of course gets diagnosed with brain cancer with months to live unless a longshot operation works. The people who care for her turn out to be rotten as well. The creditor follows Julian around everywhere he goes. Moon begins taking walks into Seoul on her own looking for things - and rather than just take a cab, she walks and asks everyone "how do I get to" and most of the people laugh at her or take her down an alley to rape her. Stop. Just stop. This has the emotional chops of a McDonald burger. If they do the operation and she can see, I think my brain will explode.