I put off watching this film for a while. I heard it was very different from other movies in the same genre and I thought that meant it was going to be pretentious. But I was wrong. Mother is one of the best crime thrillers I've ever seen. At the beginning of the film, the main character, Do-joon is run over by a car. He and his supposed friend, Jin-tae seek revenge. This scene serves to demonstrate the personality of our main character and his relationship with his friend. We learn that Do-joon is mentally retarded or at least slow in the head with a bad memory. Soon after this, Jin-tae invites him for a drink. His friend fails to show up. Then our main character is accused of murdering a girl he was seen following the night before the murder. The police coerce a confession out of him. His overprotective mother doesn't believe he's guilty. She does whatever she can to help her son. First, she struggles to obtain enough money for a lawyer. When he proves incompetent, she begins her own investigation. She takes part in acts that range from questionable to heinous. She's willing to do anything to save her son, all the while being chastised and running into other kinds of problems. As the film progresses, you learn more about the kind of person mother is. And you discover things about her as well as other characters that may surprise you.The film follows a route you're probably not used to. This will surprise some, upset others, but at the very least should be a refreshing crime thriller for those who think they've seen them all.

Wow, what a movie, and what a story! Nothing that Hollywood producers and directors would dare to do. And a long leap and change of pace after the director's previous movie Host.Mother revolves about the investigation carried out by a loving mother to prove the innocence of her mentally-challenged and psychologically-unstable son, who is is jailed for the murder of a teenage girl.Mother is a sad movie. I don't see the comic side as other viewers do. It looks depressing, it is depressing, and has a shocking ending. All the characters lack love, they have gray miserable lives that lead nowhere, they are unable to connect with other human beings in healthy ways despite living in a small town. They seem to have lost their soul somewhere. However, the good performances and the way the director Joon-ho Bong approaches the story, produces a thought-provoking slow-burning psychological thriller with a shocking ending that will make you forget how sad everything is. The biggest lesson you will remind yourself of after watching this movie is that the director makes the movie, not the story or the actors, Joon-ho gives a master lesson of what direction is in Mother.Two main themes are explored in the movie. The first one is that the way we look at the world is filtered by our color lenses, whatever those might be, and the color we see is nothing but a distortion of reality; however, those lenses can be put onto us, to manipulate our view of the world so we see that clearly when we remove them. That is, exactly, what the director does here. We are the mother's eyes until the director comes, knocks on our door and tell us, hey give me those lenses, they are mine. We look at the world and assume things and, truly we know nothing. That is why the movie has two circular anchors; the first anchor is the film opening scene with the mother dancing in a field of grass; the second anchor is almost the same scene but, by then, we have the lenses off, and so does she.The second main theme is clear from the very title - The Mother. The mother we are presented with in this film is not just Do-joon's mother. Most of the comments, scenes and attitudes shown by the character clearly relate to the Archetype of the Great Mother. The archetype relates not only to the relationship that we all have with our mothers, but it is also a repository of values and behaviors we have in our psyche about motherhood in general, in humans and in Nature. Some of the positive traits associated to the Mother Archetype are the power of healing, being a source of nourishment and fertility, being a promoter of personal development and, finally of the independence from her offspring; she is the goddess, the peacemaker, the balance. The negative traits of the mother are her overbearing and controlling nature, her unhealthy attachment to her offspring, her destructive and excessive nature; she is the witch, the mad woman, destruction, the unbalance. Just to show two examples we see the obsession of the mother with the fertility powers or manhood of her son, and she is also a healer (a herbalist and acupuncturist) who works on fertility issues and on healing people. Most of the traits I've mentioned above appear clearly in the character of the mother.The acting is good, contained but believable. Hye-ja Kim is fantastic as Mother, showing different aspects of her character's psyche without crossing the line, i.e. she's not overly dramatic or overly rigid she feels real, with her virtues and defects, ups and downs. Won Bin is also believable as the infantile "retarded" son who doesn't grasp the world.Two things I didn't like in the movie. The first thing is that the movie is a bit too long unnecessarily, with many superficial scenes that add nothing to the character or the story; they are mostly in the first hour of the film. Therefore, the pace and tempo of the movie are uneven, and the film is not as engaging as it could have been. I do love slow burning thrillers, but if something burns for too long, you get ashes. The second thing is the production: the movie looks cheap, as it was set in the 1990s, with a poor cinematography and film quality. I thought if those things had been a bit more artistic, the movie would have been terrific.Overall a really good movie, with a great story and ending, but a bit too long.

The story is a very nice example of how a movie screenplay and direction can be designed very well to play on audiences' precedents and turn them all around at a very quick instance. I really like how the movie kind of opens up with a shocking sequence that really summarized all the important characters in it. And as all Boon Joong Ho works, this movie is also not excluded of his depictions of gruesome things, although they don't really cross the line of being overly graphic. I like how the movie's opening scene seems like it's ts ending and then all those twists and turns just keeps rushing in. I even thought that there is still another twist to it when Do Joon chats about why the body is put on a high place. The acting really focuses on Kim Hye Ja and Won Bin's acting works. But in overall the acting looks very nice. Kim Hye Ja kept the constant expression of a sorrowful mother that doesn't stop for anything very well. Won Bin also acted out well as an idiot that has his responses almost like they are programmed in him.

"Mother" is an alluring piece of work, an artful mystery that melds clever plotting with resourceful camera work, with sympathetic characters that are fascinatingly morbid. South Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho follows his monster extravaganza "The Host" (2006), in firm control of his medium in a different genre, proving once again that conventions need not always confine.After a night of drinking and waiting for his long time friend, Do-joon (Won Bin), finds himself in some serious trouble. The next morning, he is accused of murdering a young woman on his way home from the bar, and he has no recollection of whether or not he did. The case has enough evidence to be closed quickly, but his mother, played by Kim Hye-ja, refuses to believe that her son could do such a thing. So she pushes forward, not accepting what the police have pieced together, and starts her own investigation to find the real killer, and free her son.The film is a labyrinthine and cleverly deceptive, and not in a way we might anticipate. Long after a conventional thriller would have its destination in plain sight, "Mother" is still penetrating our assumptions. There are twists are aplenty, and deductions achieved too easily are simply the result of contrived clues and convenient witness testimony. "Mother" delights in confounding viewer expectations. In fact, just when you think it's over, a couple more developments still remain.The film progresses with remarkable clarity, while drawing surprise and suspense from unexpected places. It's director Joon-ho Bong's unique style of old and modern approaches to filmmaking -- his stylistic and subtle ability to weave this story, and employing a witty use of dark humor throughout is what makes this film so impressive. "Mother" slowly burns its way towards revelations and depths of a character's soul that most dramatic thrillers shy away from. The most surprising aspect of "Mother" is how differently it begins, and from that, what it becomes. Unique and utterly compelling in its entirety, "Mother" concludes in a manner that solves all (or nearly all) outstanding riddles. "Mother" deftly weaves a story about mother's love into a mystery thriller that will keep you guessing every step of the way.