Remember

Remember (리멤버, 2022) is a South Korean drama-thriller directed by Lee Il-hyung. It follows Han Pil-joo, an 80-something man with Alzheimer's who lost his entire family under Japanese colonial rule. Before his memory vanishes for good, he sets out to carry out a revenge he has planned for decades.

Pil-joo cannot do it alone. He enlists In-gyu, a young man in his 20s who works with him at a family restaurant, and asks for a week of help with driving. In-gyu follows without knowing the real reason. He soon finds himself at the scene of the first act of vengeance, caught on CCTV and treated as a prime suspect while the police close in.

The film moves between road movie, buddy comedy and revenge thriller. It plays the tension of a mind that forgets its own mission against the generational gap between a man who lived the history and a young man who barely knows it.

The film is a localized remake of Atom Egoyan's 2015 Remember. It moves the story from the Holocaust to the Japanese occupation of Korea. It is about the gap between personal memory and collective forgetting: one old man carries a wound for over half a century, while the society around him, and a younger generation, has largely moved on.

According to Cine21, director Lee Il-hyung added the 20-something In-gyu, a character not in the original. He felt the film needed the way today's generation looks at history, not just a retelling of the past. In-gyu stands in for the audience, who must decide how to react when history surfaces violently in the present. The film asks what remains when historical accountability is never settled but only buried.

The film can be read as a cathartic revenge fantasy, in which collaborators finally pay for their crimes. It can also be read as a morally uneasy story about vigilante violence and how an unreliable mind sees justice. Some reviewers read it as a historical tragedy about buried guilt; others as a pulpy buddy comedy. Those who know the original film may see the ending differently, since one IMDb reviewer said it was not surprising for those who know the original.

The film belongs to a long list of Korean remakes of foreign films, and to the tradition of Korean films dealing with the colonial era and pro-Japanese collaborators. The cbci.co.kr article noted that revenge dramas and collaborator stories have appeared many times. It said the distinctive element here is an old man carrying out revenge in the present day, which shows that the past is not over.

Critic reception was modest but positive. Carla Hay called it predictable in parts but still a suspenseful thrill ride with better-than-average acting. Pierce Conran praised how the story was localized. IMDb's score is 6.8, and MyDramaList's is 8.1. Korean admissions were around 412,000.

Audiences praised the chemistry between Lee Sung-min and Nam Joo-hyuk, the blend of tenderness, dark humor and brutal violence, and the emotional ending. Some reviewers called it better than the original; others found it somewhat predictable, and one felt the ending was deceptive. A few noted the 2h 8m runtime. Ratings are generally strong: 6.8 on IMDb and 8.1 on MyDramaList. Overall, the film is considered a memorable and affecting revenge thriller.