"Don't Cry Mommy" Movie Review

South Korea's most controversial movie of 2012 recently paved its way to Philippine cinemas via the new independent local distributor of foreign movies, Axinite Digicinema, Inc. The local distributor's initial movie offering was quite an eye opener to the social status of Korea, or perhaps even in the Philippines. The movie's strong attempt to tackle a controversial plot which involves delinquent acts of teenagers (in this movie, it was teenage rape), is so surreal but a little believable. It is said at the beginning of the movie that the writer and the director motivated to do the movie because of several accounts of teenage rape cases in South Korea which were not really resolved due to either lack of evidence or the accuse is a minor and cannot be jailed because of lack of juvenile delinquency laws.



The drama-thriller movie stars Yoo Sun as the weeping mother in the title role and Nam Bo-ra as the girl victim of the teenage crime. I haven't really seen Yoo Sun act in any Korean dramas, just so you know, I am not THAT of a fan, but I know for sure that this is Nam Bo-ra's heaviest portrayal in any role. Seeing Nam Bo-ra's performance in the Korean drama "Glory Jane" was quite annoying, but I must admit, her portrayal of Eun-ah in this movie is perhaps her most memorable role to date.



Despite the fact of the issues being tackled here, it would be more exciting to watch if there are a lot of confrontational scenes between the mother and the parents of the accuse, between the mother and each of the accuse, the mother and her estranged husband and his new wife, the mother and the prosecutor, and between the mother and real perpetrator of the crime. Whew! Talk about the drama, which Koreans do like best, I guess if the confrontational scenes were given more attention, the movie could have been a much more effective medium of change to society, especially their main selling point in the first place is their controversial plot of teenage rape. Director Kim Yong-Han and screenwriter Lee Sang-Hyeon could have put a deeper drama in the film to make it more realistic and to leave a more impact to moviegoers.

The ending is nothing surprising also. The flow of the movie is according to Yoo-lim's (the mother) plan to correct this freaking mistake, which got out of control that leads to the early demise of her daughter, Eun-ah. Although, I think the screenwriter has done a great job with the movie's script, a more sensationalize version could have been better. And oh, this means there would be more blood perhaps, more drama, more heavy scenes, more confrontational scenes, and more problems to make the movie even more intense is what this movie needs when the director decided to make a sequel or perhaps a total remake of the film. Intense drama thriller movies make the heart go pounding and ask for more. In the end, both the moviegoers and the production are all happy with the result.

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