A Christmas Carol (2022)

Plain shock value to delude the viewer into thinking they saw sth of substance -- not impressed

Can I say I expected the ending? Yes. I had a feeling from the very beginning.

Great performances from all the actors.

A heart-wrenching story.

Albeit very confusing. The last 30 minutes tied some ends, but everything before that, I was wondering what is happening. who is who and how they relate. so many unnecessary characters just overwhelmed my cognitive space. Also it seems they used graphic scenes to manipulate you into believing it is a good story because it is "in your face" story. But really it is not -- the script is weak, and we don't get to know the characters well. None of them. And there is too many characters. And so many painful scenes that you should feel pity for. But you feel like intruding. Because you have no sense of heaviness to seeing gruesome scenes, except for the emotions left as the consequence of blatant surprise effect and feeling sorry for the brother who was handicaped and murdered. Cmon, please, you can also give viewer emotions through your story, cinema and script without fully exploiting our pre-existing bias towards the premise.

On the other hand, the main antagonist had quite an intriguing characterisation. I don't wanna give out spoilers so I will say they seemed to have such layering to them that could have been expanded on. By the end you get a bit into their mind and see how being a sociopath is complex condition for a reason. I thought it should have been explored in more depth because they gave them an interesting twist.

As for our main man, Park Jin Young, he did a great job in playing two roles. As the victim, he had the less screentime and he utilized it well, as for the brother role and revenge plot, it could have been more polished. All of it. i think his script was quite plain and boring; and the role could have been more substantial.

Surprisingly, a pass from me.

I do not think you are missing anything by skipping this one. If you wanna watch something with similar flavour, go for drama called Blind or the Children of Nobody. Both explore similar themes in more meaningful manner.

Thank you for reading.

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Antes que nada, si eres una persona demasiado sensible te recomiendo que no la veas, toca temas delicados como violencia y abusos. Te deja un mal sabor de boca y te sientes impotente durante toda la película.

Sinopsis: El protagonista va a un reformatorio para vengar la muerte de su hermano gemelo y descubrir qué sucedió.

Es una película cruda, violenta y triste. Si lo tuyo son los dramas y llorar por los rincones, adelante. Desde mi punto de vista, hubieron escenas que hubiese preferido no ver, pensaba "¿Es necesario que añadan esta escena también?" porque tú misma puedes imaginar lo que sucedió y no quieres ver más de ese sufrimiento. Por cierto, ni se os ocurra verla por la noche, porque te deja pensativa y después te cuesta conciliar el sueño.

Lo único malo a destacar, es que hay algunos cortes en la película, que te hacen pensar si se han saltado alguna escena o está bien. Pero digamos que lo comprobaba al mismo tiempo con una versión subtitulada en inglés y ambas estaban igual. Digamos que esos cortes "mal hechos" podrían haber sido editados fácilmente, pero no sé si les dio pereza o qué. (Quizás me equivoque y tengan un por qué, pero esa es mi única queja).

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