English Title: Yesterday

Running Time: 121 minutes
Korea Rating: 15
Release Date in Korea: 13 June 2002

Director: JUNG Yoon-soo

Cast:KIM Seung-wooasYoon-seok
KIM Yoon-jinasLO Hee-su
CHOI Min-sooasKOL Ri-at
KIM Seon-ahasMae-yi
JUNG So-young (2)asJo


[Synopsis] [Review]

Written by: Ryan Law
Date: 7 July 2002

With the blooming up of Korean Cinema in recent years, they started their trials in different genres. Science Fiction is one of their targets. This year we first have Korea-Japan collaboration 2009 LOST MEMORIES. Now we comes with YESTERDAY which describes the world of 2020.

The whoe set-up of the movie is based on a lost case of 5 children in 1990 for an experiment followed by a series of mysterious murders related to the crew of that experiment. Yoon-seok was sent as the person in-charge for the investigation. However, the simple story goes with predictable colleration with the past to develop a 2-hour long film. With lots of dark background around the days in 2002 for the director JUNG Yoon-soo to show the darkness of the future, audience should get prepared to have enough efforts before watching the film.

This film is not easy to follow. Despite the simple story line, it has over-compounded the relationships packed by lots of gun shots. Most of the time, all the leading casts are armed to get prepared to shoot. With high density of the gunshooting in the film, only a few of them are regarded as exciting enough for audiences to enjoy. The rest of them is just for audiences to be expected.

As a science fiction, the movie should give a global view on the future world. This movie has given one but only based on the murder case. This makes the over-complicated plot more weaker. When compared with other cop-styled film like 2009 LOST MEMORIES (2002) and THE LAST WITNESS (2001), this one is the weakest among the three.

No matter how much experiences the actors and the actresses has got in their film career, this film has got a common point for all characters which are lack of facial expressions. KIM Seon-ah, who plays as a cool female cop Mae-yi, has nothing to offer expect being a female with no feeling but in an approach with woody acting. KIM Yoon-jin, who acts as a scientist Hee-su, shows her better performance over other performers as she has the minimal facial experssions to show her as a human beings.

Without much to offer in script and acting, the only item that we can try to get back our remaining hope is the set up of the future community. While we expect a future with hope but it only comes with lots of things common except those advertisement broadcast 'floating' around. I am afraid we cannot expect too much on the set up of the film also.

YESTERDAY offers a film claiming as the first science fiction 'blockbuster' in Korean film industry. It has the coating as a blockbuster but not the core. The dull script and the woody acting among the performers has ruined the big title of the film. Probably it may be a kind of movie appeared in YESTERDAY but showing today.