DVD Review: Annoying ‘Seven Days’ Wastes the Talents of Yunjin Kim

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CHICAGO – What’s more depressing than a Hollywood blockbuster regurgitating cliches? A foreign film clearly inspired by those cliches, that’s what. Shin-yeon Won’s 2007 Korean thriller “Seven Days” fuses the worst stylistic excesses of Michael Bay and Tony Scott with the plot of a particularly ludicrous “CSI” episode. An American remake would not only be unnecessary, but throughly redundant.

The film’s biggest selling point for American audiences is its leading lady, Yunjin Kim, best known as Sun Kwon on “Lost.” Kim was a last-minute addition to the project after the original star quit, and her presence will undoubtedly make this picture somewhat of a curiosity piece, though it certainly won’t cheer up “Lost” fans already reeling from disappointment caused by the recent Emmy Awards snubbing. Though Kim is featured in nearly every scene, she can barely keep up with the jittery camerawork and frantic editing that routinely obscure her performance.

DVD Rating: 2.0/5.0

Kim stars as Ji-yeon Yu, a hotshot lawyer with a perfect life poised to crumble after the sunny opening scenes. Her seven-year-old daughter has recruited her to participate in a bizarre 100 meter relay race where schoolchildren pass batons to their uniformly athletic mothers. In the midst of this chaos, Kim’s daughter is abducted, and it’s not long before the worried mother starts receiving a series of threatening phone calls. Hmm…a thriller called “Seven Days” featuring threatening phone calls…is this just another bloody “Ringu” retread? Thankfully, the film’s plot twists are hardly supernatural, and at least initially, appear to have some potential. The anonymous caller tells Kim that in order for her daughter to be returned, she must prove the innocence of a sleazy criminal (Myeong-Su Choi) on his second trial. His crime? The murder of a young woman, whose mother (Mi-suk Kim) is determined to see justice prevail.

Seven Days was released on DVD on Aug. 24th, 2010.
Photo credit: Virgil Films

Like so many American blockbusters, this film takes a premise with great dramatic complexity and fascinating moral implications, and proceeds to drain it of its ingenuity, turning a human journey into a crudely assembled rollercoaster. I haven’t seen the previous two films from writer/director Won, whose past work (“The Wig,” “A Bloody Aria”) has dabbled in the horror genre, garnering him somewhat of a cult status. His delirious visual style seems to function as a desperate attempt to distract viewers from the ridiculous embellishments of his plot, which doesn’t hold up at all upon close inspection. His style works against the drama rather than enhances it, and numbs the mind when it should be provoking it. For the film’s first two thirds, editor Min-kyeong Shin doesn’t hold on a shot for longer than a few seconds, while proceeding to utilize a series of fades, dissolves, film speeds and montages that make a picture like “Man on Fire” look subdued by comparison. The picture is an absolute headache until the final act arrives, centering on a court hearing of oversimplified obviousness. It’s strangely the least dramatic portion of the film, and is only a prelude to the film’s final twist, which manages to negate the film’s moral paradox (a la “The Life of David Gale”).

If there is anything to recommend in the film, it is the relatively strong performances from its cast. Kim does what she can with her underwritten role, which is shrill and one-note, since Won neglects to explore the hypocrisy of lawyer willing to save her daughter by aiding the assumed killer of another girl. Thus, Kim is simply left to play the victim, widening her eyes and screaming nearly as much as Shelley Duvall in “The Shining.” Myeong-su Choi and Mi-suk Kim fare much better in their roles, primarily because they harbor some actual ambiguity. Hie-sun Park is also quite good as the cop who attempts to help Kim solve the crime, despite the fact that his assistance directly puts Kim’s daughter in danger. That’s because “Seven Days” is one of those absurd thrillers where the villain is literally everywhere, commenting on Kim’s behavior via phone as he’s always hiding behind a nearby sofa. Won’s love of American horror films is most apparent in his various homages to David Fincher’s “Se7en,” from his opening credit sequence (which is a blatant rip-off), to its climax set in a field. There are also plenty of tastelessly gratuitous sequences detailing the murder of a woman in unflinching close-up. Such scenes miss the spirit of Fincher’s film, which was as diabolically entertaining as it was truly disturbing. “Seven Days” is no fun at all.

“Seven Days” is presented in its original widescreen aspect ratio, and contains no redeeming extras.

By MATT FAGERHOLM Staff Writer HollywoodChicago.com matt@hollywoodchicago.com