A Day

Kim Jun-young, a celebrated surgeon played by Kim Myung-min, returns from abroad on the day his daughter is killed in a traffic accident. Then the same day begins again. And again. Each time he tries to save her, and each time he fails. Its use of the loop departs from the genre's usual shape. Jun-young is not alone in it; an ambulance driver who lost his wife in the same crash is living the same day over as well, and when the two meet the film turns from a puzzle into a moral reckoning. The cause of the loop is not a supernatural force but the consequence of something done in the past. Cho Sun-ho directed. The narrative knows how to compress its repetitions; the same scenes return altered by new information each time and the pace does not sag. Who it is for: viewers who like time-loop thrillers and Korean melodrama together. Who it is not for: anyone who will find the emotional register excessive, since the film surrenders fully to melodrama in its final section.