Welcome back to Movie Recaps. Today I will show you a drama,
mystery, thriller film from 2017, titled A Day. Spoilers ahead! Watch out and take care.
On a plane flying back to Korea, famous doctor Kim Joon-young is asked by the flight attendant
to sign her magazine, which has his picture on the cover. Joon-young's coworker, Yong-sun,
encourages him to do so and even takes a photo of them together. After the flight attendant is gone,
Yong-sun reminds Joon-young that they're running out of donations and this is good publicity. Half
an hour later, when their plane lands, Joon-young checks his phone and notices his daughter Eun-jung
hasn't answered a single one of his texts. At the moment, Eun-jung is walking through the city after
school with two friends, who don't believe her dad is famous and tease her for not having him around
for her birthday or to do normal things together like getting lunch. This puts her in a bad mood,
so when she sees her dad is trying to call her, she ignores him. Back in the airport, Yong-sun is
frustrated because Joon-young insists on being humble and not taking advantage of his fame.
He had turned down the business class tickets the UN had offered him, and now he refuses to go out
through the VIP gate. On their way out through the regular gates, they hear a mother calling for help
for her child, and Joon-young doesn't hesitate to go to them: in just a couple of seconds, he saves
the boy's life by helping him cough out the candy that had gotten stuck in his throat. He doesn't
stay behind for pictures, he just rushes out while trying to call his daughter again, to no avail.
He's getting desperate, so Yong-sun helps him by giving him a bag of chocolates and candy for
him to gift Eun-jung before asking him to solve things with both his daughter and their business.
Joon-young is confused by this statement until he sees what is waiting for them at the gate:
a group of reporters. Yong-sun has organized a small press conference without telling Joon-young
because he knew he would say no. The airport gives him a small area where he can talk to the
reporters about his work with the UN for the last three years. The news of his arrival appears on
most channels, even the one currently on the tv at the Arcade Eun-jung and her friends have gone to.
Now they believe her dad is famous and she allows herself to look proud of him
until Joon-young mentions that her getting sick three years ago was the inspiration for
him to do voluntary work and Yong-sun cuts to clarify Eun-jung is healthy now, just a little
bit temperamental. This embarrasses her in front of her friends and puts her in a bad mood again.
After the press conference is over, Joon-young finally gets a text from his daughter telling him
off for embarrassing her and making him promise he'll be on time to meet her or she'll leave.
Joon-young improves her mood a bit by promising her lots of gifts and punctuality. Joon-young gets
in his car and drives away to meet his daughter, only finding a small delay when he goes through
the tollbooths and the clerk drops his change, so she has to count it again. He almost makes it in
time but when he's nearby the area he was going to meet Eun-jung at, he sees a crash has occurred, so
he stops to help. The car involved in the accident is a taxi, and Joon-young gently takes the driver
out before checking on the passenger, a woman that sadly is already dead. When the paramedics arrive,
he tells them about the driver's status before calling his daughter to tell her he'll be late,
but a man answers his phone telling him she's been in an accident. It's then that
Joon-young realizes that the person the cab has run over is Eun-jung. Before he can even react,
Joon-young blinks and suddenly finds himself back on the plane with the flight attendant in
front of him asking for his autograph. He goes with the flow and signs the magazine again,
but he can't stop being weirded out by how his day seems to be repeating. Yong-su tells him the same
exact thing, he predicts the kid choking on his candy, and the press conference is waiting for
him at the gate. This time the situation makes him too nervous to even finish the interview,
so he just leaves for the parking lot and texts Eun-jung. He tries to convince her to let him
pick her up, but she turns him down and tells him to meet him at the usual place. He begins driving
while trying to call her, but she won't answer, so by the time he makes it to the tollbooth,
he's too anxious to wait for his change when the clerk drops it and leaves without it.
Sadly, by the time he makes it to the scene of the accident, he's too late: Eun-jung is already dead.
As Joon-young drops to his knees in front of her, the day resets again. This time,
he isn't patient: he runs out of the regular gate hallway, taking the boy's candy with him,
and he takes the VIP gate to get to the parking lot without seeing the reporters.
He texts Eun-jung and tells her they must cancel their meeting, which prompts her to call him and
express how much she hates him being a distant father. She tells him she'll wait for him until
he comes before hanging up, so Joon-young gets worried again and takes the road on his car by
breaking the speed limits, even driving through the tollbooth without even paying. In his hurry,
he takes a one-way street and gets stuck in front of a car coming from the opposite direction.
By the time he manages to leave, he's late again. The day resets once more and this time,
Joon-young leaves the airport driving like a madman. Now he knows to avoid the one-way street,
but he ends up crashing into an alley and having to make his way to the scene of the accident on
foot, so he's late again. During the next reset, since trying to talk to his daughter is pointless,
Joon-young grabs the cab driver's phone and learns his number, so when the day resets again,
he calls the driver to warn him about the accident, but the man hangs up on him.
This time, when he rushes out of the airport at top speed, he takes some unfinished roads
and makes it to the scene a couple of minutes earlier, but all this allows him to do is see
the exact moment his daughter gets hit by the cab. Joon-young has a breakdown in front of the body,
but suddenly he's grabbed by a man that tells him every day is the same except for him.
This man is Lee Min-chul, one of the paramedics that Joon-young talked to when the accident
happened the first time. While his coworker had checked on the driver, Min-chul had looked into
the cab and found that the dead woman inside was his wife, Mi-kyung. Before he could even react,
the day reset for him as well. He tried to call his wife but she wouldn't pick up the phone,
so after using a couple of resets to try to get to the scene of the accident earlier and failing,
he started using his time to search for her, but none of her friends knew where she was.
He did notice however, that in every reset Joon-young was different, and this time is the
first time he gets to approach him before the day ends. They only have a few seconds left though,
so Joon-young tells him they should meet and talk once the day begins again.
During the next reset, the two men meet at an abandoned road and share their experiences.
It seems it's impossible to stop the accident from happening, so instead, they should stop
their girls from getting there in the first place. They let the day restart and this time,
Joon-young does go to the press conference to use it as a way to talk to Eun-jung, since she
wouldn't pick up her phone. She sees him on tv telling her that he's changing their meeting spot
to Central Park, which embarrasses her in front of friends again and she doesn't listen to her dad.
After the conference, Joon-young calls Mi-kyung, who had had a fight with Min-chul so she wasn't
picking up his calls either, but she does answer Joon-young. He tries to warn her about the
accident but it's too late: she's getting into the cab as they speak and of course, a moment later,
the accident happens again. The day resets again so the men change their tactics.
Joon-young does talk to Eun-jung during the conference once again, but this time, he doesn't
only change their meeting place: he also tells her he loves her and promises he won't be late,
and these words warm her up a bit to the request. Meanwhile, knowing that they can't stop his wife
from getting into the cab, Min-chul decides that they need to stop the cab itself. He hits his head
with a brick and goes to the police, telling them he's been a victim of a hit-and-run and giving
them the cab's license plate for the cops to stop it. While waiting for the police to do their jobs,
Min-chul remembers the argument he had with Mi-kyung the day before all this started.
They had fought over the subject of having a baby: Mi-kyung wanted one now and was even
willing to give up her studies and work instead, but Min-chul disagreed - he also wanted a kid but
he felt they need to wait a couple of years until he got his promotion. By the end of the fight,
Mi-kyung wasn't talking to him anymore. A moment later, the cops and Joon-young make it to the
scene of the accident, except there's no accident. Thinking they've managed to save the day,
Joon-young calls Min-chul and tells him they can meet later to celebrate before going to the park
to meet his daughter. In the meantime, the cops manage to find the cab and when they approach it,
the driver escapes at high speed. The police go after him, and the chase is heard by Min-chul
through the ambulance's intercoms, so he begins making his way to the park as well. As Joon-young
looks for his daughter at the park, he receives a call from a strange number: it's the taxi driver,
telling him that he saw the press conference and knows he changed their meeting spot. This only
means Eun-jung will die there instead of on the street like she should've died three years ago.
Getting desperate, Joon-young rushes through the park and checks on every little girl until he
finds his daughter right as the taxi is arriving, so he puts himself between the car and Eun-jung,
only for the day to reset again. After waking up, Min-chul calls Joon-young and tells him what
he's discovered: after the crash at the park, he checked the back of the car and discovered
his wife had already been dead. The taxi driver is killing Eun-jung and Mi-kyung on purpose, and
the day is repeating for him as well, which is why they can't stop him. The two men decide to search
for information about someone they met three years ago that could fit the bill: Joon-young uses the
database of the hospital he used to work at and continues to be welcomed in, while Min-chul goes
back to the police station, this time using the brick to knock out the cop and using his computer.
Three years ago, Eun-jung had been terribly ill and the only way for her to survive was a heart
transplant. One stormy night, she and Joon-young were incredibly happy when they thought they had
found a donor, but he quickly went from happy to upset when he learned that the dead kid's guardian
refused to donate their child's organs. Meanwhile, Min-chul was making his rounds in the ambulance
and got distracted for a second, which almost made him crash against a car. He dodged it just
in time, but the car went off the road and crashed anyway. Min-chul checked on the victims and got
them in his ambulance to take them to the same hospital where Eun-jung was waiting for a heart.
Back in the present, a group of cops find Min-chul at the station and arrest him, but before the day
resets again, Min-chul manages to see the name of the crash victim from three years ago on the
computer: it's Lee Kang-sik, the same man that has been driving the cab. Kang-sik wakes up every
morning in a depressed state and sees on tv that Joon-young would give a press conference at the
airport, meaning he's back in the country and this is Kang-sik's opportunity to act. Now that
they have a name, Joon-young goes to Kang-sik's apartment and finds it empty, but he also finds
the paperwork from his hospital stay three years ago and pictures of his son Lee Ha-roo,
whose name means "day". Joong-young then remembers the rest of what happened that day and tells the
full story to Min-chul when he arrives at the apartment as well: that stormy night, Ha-roo
arrived at the hospital a little too late, he already was brain dead. Kang-sik was unconscious
after surgery and couldn't consent to allow his son's heart to be donated, so Joon-young forged
his signature and grabbed the sleeping man's hand to force his fingertip on the paperwork.
After hearing this, Min-chul punches Joong-young for what he did, and now they have no other choice
but to wait for the day to reset as a grieving Kang-sik drove at high speed to kill Eun-jung
yet again. When the day restarts, Min-chul rushes to the scene of the accident to try
to talk to Kang-sik and ask him to spare Mi-kyung because she has nothing to do with what happened,
but Kang-sik is unconscious. Joon-young however, doesn't leave the airport as he always does.
He stays in his car and watches the video Eun-jung sent her the night before her surgery,
because he left the country to do voluntary work after handing in the forged paperwork and
didn't stay to see his daughter get better, the guilt was too much. After yet another
reset of Min-chul searching for his wife to no avail and Joon-young's apathy disappearing when
he almost lets the boy choking with the candy die, the two men meet to discuss the problem.
Joon-young wants to save Kang-sik to apologize and beg for his forgiveness, which could possibly get
him to stop the murders, but Min-chul disagrees. He wants to kill the man for what he's done,
but first he must find his wife, so the men part ways there. Min-chul goes home to search for clues
of where Mi-kyung could be. He's about to give up when he notices something on her calendar:
she's stopped circling the day of her period a few months ago. Min-chul finally realizes what's going
on and why they argued about babies the other day: Mi-kyung is pregnant, and he can't find
her at any of the usual places because she's at the doctor's getting a baby sonogram. So Min-chul
starts calling a bunch of different obstetricians' offices to find his wife. Meanwhile, Joon-young
goes to the scene of the accident and puts Kang-sik's body in his car before the paramedics
arrive. He takes him to his hospital and gives him a couple of injections to keep him alive
while he apologizes for his actions. At first, he had thought the time loop had been god's blessing
to help him save his daughter, but now he thinks it's hell for having seen her die so many times.
He tells Kang-sik that he had been desperate that night and any father would've done the same,
which Kang-sik agrees with: yes, he also would've done the same, but that also means Joon-young can
sympathize in return because if this had happened to him, Joon-young would be seeking revenge too.
Kang-sik hesitated many times before killing Eun-jung, but thinking about Ha-roo was enough
to keep him going, and so he admits he'll never stop killing Eun-jung. Joon-young begs
him to kill him instead, but it's too late: Kang-sik is dying and can't talk anymore.
Min-chul calls Joon-young then and tells him he's found his wife, suddenly getting shocked
when he looks at his watch and notices the day is lasting longer than usual. As a group
of cops enters the room to arrest him, Joo-young realizes what is the real trigger for the loop:
the day restarts whenever Kang-sik dies. The day resets again and Min-chul rushes to see his wife,
but when he arrives at the obstetrician's office, he overhears Mi-kyung saying she's considering
terminating the pregnancy and now he can't stop thinking how sad she was before every time she
died. He calls Joon-young to tell him this and ignores his warnings when he swears he's going to
kill Kang-sik before hanging up. Joon-young still remembers Kang-sik's number from when he memorized
it during one of the first loops, so he calls him and tries to warn him, but it's too late: Min-chul
is already getting into the taxi. He stabs Kang-sik on the shoulder and then the two man
start struggling with each other as Min-chul tells him of Mi-kyung's pregnancy. Kang-sik isn't moved
by these words and reminds him that the night of the accident, Min-chul at first had run away and
only came back a moment later to save them. If he hadn't hesitated, perhaps his son would be alive.
The two men begin hitting each other with various parts of the car before Kang-sik finally manages
to push Min-chul off him, and once he's out of the cab, he begins driving at high speed to reach
Eun-jung at the usual time. Joon-young is making his way there as well, and this time, he manages
to arrive before the accident happens. He puts his car between Eun-jung and Kang-sik, saving
his daughter and causing the cab to overturn. After taking Eun-jung to a safe spot and asking
her to wait because he has something important to do, Joon-young goes back to the cab and tries
to get Kang-sik out, which proves difficult because his leg is stuck in the wreckage.
Kang-sik can't understand why he's trying to save him, so Joon-young explains that the day
resets with his death, which means the loop was created by Ha-roo, who lives within Eun-jung,
to save his dad. Killing Eun-jung and her donated heart would equal killing Ha-roo again.
At that moment, a furious Min-chul arrives in his ambulance, so Joon-young hurries up
and drags Kang-sik out of the cab before Min-chul crashes against it. Still not wanting to give up,
Min-chul grabs his knife and approaches Kang-sink, but Joon-young jumps on him and tries to stop him.
In their struggle, Min-chul accidentally stabs Joon-young, who still insists Kang-sink shouldn't
be killed even he dies like this, because it means his daughter, Mi-kyung and her baby get to live.
Meanwhile, Kang-sink sees Eun-jung nearby and with Joon-young's words still echoing in his mind,
he comes closer as he remembers how the girl had talked to him while he was in the hospital and
asked him to survived because Ha-roo lived in her. Finally seeing his son in her, Kang-sink hugs her
and when he notices the car behind them catching on fire, he turns around and shields her from the
explosion, causing another reset. This will be the last day this day repeats, because the three men
know how to make things right now. Min-chul goes to wait for his wife outside the obstetrician's
office and after apologizing for his behavior, he tells her he wants to have the baby. After she
gets a message from an unknown number saying "I'm sorry", Mi-kyung tells him the baby is a girl,
and Min-chul decides they should name her Ha-roo. Kang-sink goes to see Eun-jung and shows her a
picture of Ha-roo. Eun-jung likes finally meeting him and asks Kang-sink what his favorite food was.
When he answers chocolate, Eun-jung laughs, because she used to hate sweet stuff but since
the surgery, she craves chocolate all the time. Kang-sink also gets a text message,
his says "thank you". Meanwhile, at the airport, Joon-young tells Yong-sun about what he did.
Yong-sun is upset to hear it but also thinks it should stay in the past now that it's over
however, Joong-young doesn't listen. When the time for the press conference comes,
he confesses his crime in front of the cameras for the whole world to hear.