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The Highway Family (2022) - A Flawed Attempt on Empathy and Awareness

This review contains unmarked spoilers, proceed at your own risk. Though I wrote this as I love reviewing stuff despite not intending for it to be read, I still put on a spoiler warning in case people come across this anyway.

These are all my personal opinions, they’re not correct! They’re just my personal views, in case someone finds this for some reason haha.

I just finished watching a Korean movie titled “The Highway Family” directed by Lee Sang-mun, which was released in late 2022 according to Google and IMDB.

And it was unfortunately a bland ride someone who decently likes slow burns and social awareness dramas couldn’t enjoy, though I tried my best to.

The plot summary over at IMDB would say, and I cite, “When a middle-aged, grieving woman gives money to a family out of kindness, only to learn they are homeless and living at the highway rest area, a life-altering series of events unfolds.“

And that sounds like a great synopsis to a drama where a family turns over a new leaf and is given a second chance at a start after living through poverty throughout their entire lives by a that grieving woman (Young-su).

Unfortunately, that wouldn’t be what this movie would turn out to be.

Plot write-up/summary:

The movie has a good start, introducing the family and their silly antics, camping out in places they aren’t supposed to camp in and emphasizing the cute interactions between the parents and their children despite their current situation, and showing that perhaps not all children who grow up in poverty are the stereotypical unhappy and starving children.

It establishes them as humans, people who were just given the wrong end of the stick, if that metaphor is correct for situations like this.

After a short montage of the family traveling to a rest stop, the father, Ki-woo, asks a random couple for 20,000 won, stating that he doesn’t have enough gas money to refill his tank and additionally mentioning that he lost his wallet.

But he asks for their bank account so he can wire the money back, so he’s nice! Nah, just kidding, he never pays back any of the people he scammed.

When that doesn’t work, he brings out the kids, Eun-yi and Taek.

The two kids showing up are usually enough to goat people into giving them his money, which they fortunately use to feed the kids some instant ramen. Which definitely can’t be good for them to be eating all the time, but what other choice do they have anyway?

Though I definitely would never condone scamming people out of 20,000 won (which is like $15 according to Google), they at least had a morally sound reason to do that, and he at least used the money to feed his wife and children.

They then get kicked out of the rest stop after lingering a bit too long and provoking an officer (not police) and snapping one of their tent’s poles in that altercation.

But before they leave, they scam a nice lady who offers an additional 50,000 won above the 20,000 they usually get from scamming, this lady is Young-su, who had seen Eun-yi trying to drink tap water earlier.

After that happens, Young-su leaves the rest stop, as she glances at her car’s dashboard to see how little gas she has left but still smiling regardless as she continues driving.

They then move to another rest stop, despite Taek’s protest of being too tired to walk. He then throws a fit, where he runs off away from the family. Ji-sook sends Eun-yi to fetch her brother, where she surprisingly handles his tantrum well and gets him to calm down after he trips in the middle of running away by offering him candy she kept to herself.

This works well, as mentioned above, only for Taek to start chewing, have one of his baby tooth fall off right then, and start crying again. I guess this was comedic to people watching in theaters, but I think I was one of those who didn’t really care too much. (Sorry..)

Eun-yi doubles down and offers him more candy, calming him down completely. She then throws off his tooth into the nearby bushes and prays. (Is this a cultural thing in South Korea? Not sure, despite having watched K-Dramas for 3 years at this point)

The family then begins their trip to their next rest stop, walking through tunnels to get to their destination.

I’m getting a bit lazy as I type, so here’s a TL;DR of what happened after they establish all the important characters:

They get to another rest stop, where Ki-woo scams an unsuspecting elderly couple out of the usual 20,000 won and thanks them as they drive off, with the mandatory “I’ll wire it back to your bank account” excuse;

Young-su coincidentally drives to the rest stop they’re in, spots Ki-woo scamming an unsuspecting elderly couple and puts on a disguise to watch the family;

Eun-yi and Taek starts playing a game of hide and seek, where Taek with his genius (what seems to be) six year old mind, decides to hide under a truck of all places, and nearly gets RUN OVER until Young-su swoops in to save them. To add: now that I think about it, this movie was ALWAYS one step away from turning into a horror or thriller movie;

Young-su drags the kids to the parents, berating them for their failure to watch the kids. Ki-woo at this point had completely forgotten who she was (or it was an act, couldn’t tell since the actor really looked dumbfounded lol). He starts to be passive-aggressive with her, where she just goes “Yeah, no. I’m calling the police.”;

Cue Young-su calling the police on them and them running off to a new rest stop, but not before Ji-sook falls down, giving Young-su a chance to catch up and probe her. This reveals that she’s pregnant with another child. She then runs off and consoles Ki-woo, who has a bit of a violent breakdown and threatening Young-su with death in the chaos;

They then catch the family, taking them to the nearby police station. Ki-woo is arrested and Young-su takes the family to live with them.

They live decent lives until Ki-woo breaks out from his cell, which coincidentally sparks a few unfortunate incidents to happen. Taek tears his ligament after being accidentally crushed by furniture that Young-su’s husband and their employee was transporting (he’s completely fine outside of that tear), despite being told not to get out of the car after he insists to come with them. Young-su and Ji-sook was already in the hospital for a medical checkup of Ji-sook’s baby. Young-su and her husband’s relationship sours further.

Cue Ki-woo meeting Eun-yi after escaping, telling her to pass a note to Ji-sook after admiring his daughter’s new ability to write and read (Eun-yi was completely illiterate up to this point);

Ji-sook then goes “Yeah, sorry, no. I’m not going back to that life, PLEASE leave.” when she meets him, sending him into another very bad violent breakdown after he leaves;

Ki-woo completely loses it. He first dine and dashes a poor ahjumma selling fried food and threatened her with a skewer, and then going through a grocery store and just ravaging it and eating whatever he comes across. When confronted by staff, he throws a watermelon and some other fruits and vegetables at them then runs off. He then... umm.. smears his face with what looks to be feces and picks up a flaming bucket;

He comes back to Young-su’s house as they are having BBQ together with Ji-sook, completely broken at this point and sets her furniture on fire in the struggle to restrain him, everyone survives but Ki-woo.

The movie ends with Eun-yi’s internal monologue to her father, stating that she’s happy now and is living well with Young-su. The movie then cuts to a shot of them after the incident, showing Young-soo and her husband embracing the two children, as they cry.

The Review

Reading the plot summary I made above, I could say that the movie was very messy in terms of its plot points.

It goes from 0 to 100 quickly, and not in a good way. It tries to portray a neutral ground on poverty and to bring awareness of it, only to end up creating this weirdly tense experience even though the first half seems to hint at a emotional drama movie rather than a thriller movie.

I’m aware that the two genres (thriller and drama) can go hand-in-hand when pulled off well (Juvenile Justice), it’s just that from the promotional material for this movie just gives a different vibe than what I got watching the end product.

So I’ll rate this movie on 3 categories: cinematography, characterization and story.

Story

The plot was very messy to say the least, it just outright swapped genres from a drama to a f!cking thriller-tragedy after Ki-woo decided to go out like that in the end.

My expectations for the movie was a pure ‘0 to hero’ kind of drama. Where despite Ki-woo and his violent breakdowns, he eventually begins seeking help and eventually gets back on his feet with the support of the people around him.

I know that this type of plot is overdone, but in my opinion it would’ve been better with this approach alongside the scenes of Ki-woo struggling.

Another problem is how his violent breakdowns are never properly explained in the movie, and it becomes a bit problematic and it ends up clashing with other plot points if this aspect of him suddenly became a vital plot point while trying to present Ji-wook trying to get back on her feet without Ki-woo through proper means. They then could’ve shown Ji-wook getting proper mental health assistance and reuniting with kids after he gets better mentally, as this life has left some obvious scars on his psyche and he clearly needs it based on how he acts after the first half. If only they went with this route instead and didn’t go with the violent prison break plot point.

This could’ve been good, but ended up falling flat hard and failing to convey anything important socially regarding poverty and the people who struggle through it.

Final rating: 2/5, this was not a good social awareness drama nor a good thriller.

Cinematography

Okay, this movie has a few saving graces, and one of them is its cinematography. It has a few good shots that stand out, with some being wallpaper worthy:

This movie seems to love playing with symmetrically balanced compositions and wide shots, which I dig!

The way the movie is graded in some scenes seem to remind me of older Korean films for some reason, though I can’t grasp exactly why.

Final rating: 4.5/5

Characterization

In my opinion, also quite weak. None of the characters stand out too much but Eun-yi, who’s overall mature, really knows how to read situations, and caring towards her troublemaking and selfish younger brother. What makes her particularly stand out is her calm and composed personality, and I personally feel like she was more fleshed out than the other characters.

Even Young-su, Ki-woo, and Ji-sook didn’t stand out this much in comparison to her, as their overall characterization was weak and they weren’t really fleshed out as the plot progressed.

Final rating: 2.5/5

Overall Rating: 3

Verdict: One size doesn’t fit all, some may enjoy this movie, but I clearly didn’t enjoy it too much. It could’ve been better with a bit of a more polished story. This movie attempted to bring empathy and awareness, only to sadly fail in doing so. With overall weak characters, there was no one I could really latch on to. The acting was good, but overall standard quality where it isn’t bad nor mediocre, but it wasn’t too great either. Granted, they were probably limited by the kinda weak script.

#movie review #korean #korean movie