This came out of nowhere and genuinely became one of the best movies I've ever seen. I didn't expect it to be this good. By the end of the movie I was almost crying. The very first thing I noticed that got me hooked right from the begining was how easy it is to empathize with and root for the main character. You feel the harrowing journey he's going through, and his incredible resilience. The writing and character arcs are brilliant. There are things that happen between characters that are built up in such a way where you start to fall in love with them as it's happening. Everything feels earned and the romance is incredibly strong by the time it gets there. These actors have AMAZING chemistry and are perfect in their roles. Lots of great performances and I even liked the villainous French guy who had a very strong and commanding presence on screen. I'd love to see more of these actors!

I have no idea why they chose to go down this route, but this movie could have been so impactful. If they had focused on the whole process of being a deported North Korean defector. I was prepared to be sad by the tragedy of that situation even though I'm not into sad movies, thinking at least it'd give us some knowledge of what it means to defect North Korea etc. On the contrary though, this movie seems to focus more on the Belgium underground criminal scene. Personally I found that storyline ridiculous and uninteresting. Sorry!

As in many Korean movies, the number of tragedies one must face seem to be the indicator of how good a movie will be. So we get plenty here too, literally for every character, there's no escape.

The romance, we could all see it coming from the start, but it happened literally in a blink of an eye. I wasn't expecting it to turn romantic so fast and then remain till the end. I thought it'd be a political movie, but granted this was just me.

I had to fast forward and skip many parts without losing much of the plot. However, the last scene was very cute.

To clear an conceptions out of the way, the acting was rather perfect.

The movie started really strong and the things that Kiwan went through was super intriguing. I was invested and in the edge of my seat for loh kiwans in the first half of the movie.

Then, the girl's story came with its all sub-plots and forced drama. The gun gangs was weird and unnecessary. The love story was misguided and yeah Tragic romance is not my thing specially with this level of emo fanfic subplots?!! The drug scenes was a second hand embarrassment.

I CRINGED FROM THE VERY EXPECTED ENGING.

Ps: he was an ass hole with that factory lady and super forgiving with the female protagonist , it was irritating to watch.

"The amount of mid movies I watched for SJK should be studied"