[HanCinema's Film Review] "Seven Days" + DVD Giveaway

Ji-yeon (played by Kim Yunjin) is an ace attorney who is also a loving, if somewhat busy mother. Then, for "Seven Days", Ji-yeon is forced to search the world upside-down to solve an intense high-action mystery that has nothing to do with her. And it all happens so fast. One scene it's happy smiles and the next it's vehicular action then emotional wailing then clandestine meetings with rabid dogs and chase scenes and mental institutions and wow, you can just feel the adrenaline right now through the words of this review can't you?

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The one thing "Seven Days" is largely lacking is any kind of logical continuity. Yes, to be charitable, the ending does eventually manage to explain who all the culprits were. It just forgets to explain why anyone felt the need to drag Ji-yeon into this situation through the use of grisly threats when all the main players in this huge drama have left evidence lying around at random, in portions so tantalizingly small that they can only move Ji-yeon forward to next piece.

...And that's the real reason of course. Screenwriting chicanery. Writer Yoon Jae-goo fashions a perfect script, in the sense that it sends all the characters where they need to go for the next thriller action setpiece to make logical sense. The problem is that nothing that happens in "Seven Days" makes sense when attacked with real-world logic rather than screenwriting logic. Take the legal system, which isn't even the Korean legal system. Instead, imagine a weird facsimile of tropes pasted together from American crime shows.

These are distinct from the crime shows of other countries, not through style, but through discrete legal concepts. Miranda warnings and prosecutory burden of proof are hallmarks of the American jurisprudence that do not exist in the Korean legal system. It embarrasses me to have to point this out, given that I am not a Korean person, and the people who made this movie are.

Of course, "Seven Days" is not a legal documentary. Really, it's not even a bad movie. Final twists and turns notwithstanding, the continuity is pretty decent, and even if the action often veers into borderline self-parody, well, movies are all about spectacle. Director Won Shin-yun definitely gets that even the little stuff, like a petty fight on top of a freeway on-ramp, can have serious tension just so long as the actors are sufficiently angry and the scene is only the minimum length necessary to address a plot hole before we leap forward into next explosion of high-stakes investigation.

The issue is, and I'll admit this is an assumption on my part, that if you're reading my reviews on this website, it's because you're trying to get out of the American-dominated malaise of the modern film industry and into Korean stuff, even should that be an interesting failure. "Seven Days" is more along the lines of a boring success. Much like a typical American boilerplate investigative thriller, it's easier for me to be pedantic about its flaws than genuinely enthusiastic about its generic successes. While "Seven Days" is plenty cool, it's not the kind of movie that has much in the way of staying power.

Review by William Schwartz

"Seven Days" is directed by Won Shin-yun and features Kim Yunjin, Kim Mi-sook and Park Hee-soon.

 

Available on DVD and streaming from Amazon

 

Amazon Video

DVD US (En Sub)

Seven Days DVD