Remember

Pil-ju, an old man diagnosed with Alzheimer's, wants to finish a list before his memory goes entirely: the men who collaborated during the occupation and were responsible for his family's deaths. He takes along a young colleague who has no idea what he is doing. Lee Il-hyung directed. Lee Sung-min plays Pil-ju, Nam Joo-hyuk the young friend. The film is a remake of the 2015 Canadian film Remember. There the target was Nazi collaborators; the Korean version moves the same structure to the Japanese occupation and to a reckoning that never happened after the war. That change puts the film somewhere else: most collaborators in Korea were never tried and found places in the order that followed, and the story rests on that historical fact. Memory loss works as both dramatic device and argument; the old man is not the only one forgetting. Lee Sung-min's performance carries it. Who it is for: viewers who like revenge stories and the theme of settling with history. Who it is not for: anyone who knows the original; this version is more explicit and more emotional.