Night in Paradise… Where do I start? The movie actually started out quite nicely. I absolutely loved the very cold colors. It incited a feeling of nostalgia and longing. I loved how we saw the main character, Tae Goo, interact with people he loves and cares for. The banter between himself and his sister, the interactions with his (unfairly adorable) niece, the way you see him pick up his sister’s medications and get information on how she’s doing.

These are aspects of Tae Goo that build on his humanity despite his line of work. We see him be devastated when his sister and his niece are brutally murdered during the car accident. We see him kill (or so we thought) Director Do and a few of his men in cold blood when he receives a tip from his boss that they were involved in the death of his family. Then, we see him escape to Jeju. Up until that point, things were going really good. Yes there was lots of blood until that point, but it felt justified.

And then we enter the second part where he meets Jae Yun. Let me start off by saying that there isn’t much at all to Jae Yun’s character. She’s absolutely dull and boring. The only interesting thing about her is that she’s going to die soon due to an illness (that isn’t even specified). We barely know anything about her except for the fact that she lost her family due to her uncle’s affiliation with a gang, that she resents him for it, and that she loves mulhoe (she’s also greatly talented with guns).

These aspects about Jae Yun could have set her up to be a solid character, but instead it creates this lack of empathy from the viewer’s point of view because we still don’t know her despite what we know about her. Instead of being shown how she feels, we are told how she feels. For example, when she explains to Tae Goo that she actually resented her uncle and that she wished it had been him who died instead of her parents and little sister. Based on her interactions with him, I would have never guessed. There was absolutely no tension with her uncle when they were together, no hint to allude to the fact that she might not like him much. In reality we barely even saw them interact.

Then, you pair up Jae Yun (a character I couldn’t care less about) with Tae Goo (a character I was starting to warm up to), give them useless dialogues, and try to make me believe that he would actually go back to save her. Without giving me the whys. Even the immensely talented cast of actors couldn’t save the nonsensical storyline for me. When Tae Goo died, I felt absolutely nothing. To be honest, I didn’t care at all. And I cared even less when Jae Yun went to the restaurant and shot everyone before going to the beach and shooting herself in the head.

Overall, my issue with this movie is that we didn’t get to know the characters in depth. There seemed to be so many layers to the characters, yet we were only shown the surface of what they were like. And that’s such a shame! I wanted to get attached to the characters. I wanted to feel devastated when Tae Goo died. I wanted to be marked by this movie. I wasn’t. All I could think of after watching the movie was “What a waste.”