Daisy (Korean Movie)

This is the 4th and latest movie of the Korean actress Jeon Ji Hyun of My Sassy Girl and Windstruck fame. In this movie she has moved away from her cutsie characters in the 2 earlier movies and into a serious dramatic role here.

In Daisy, Jeong Ji Hyun is a side walk sketch artist in Amsterdam. She lives above her gallery and often wanders the countryside doing impressionist styled paintings of it and dreams of being able to have an exhibition show of her own one day.

While crossing a log bridge one day she fell off and into a shallow stream. Unknown to her, she was watched by a Korean man, Jung Woo Sung, who was living nearby and he retrieved her satchel which was washed away. Besotted with her innocent beauty, he began sending a pot of daisy to her gallery every afternoon. He also replaced the crude log bridge with a more wider and safer bridge for her to cross.
Touched by this mysterious admirer, Ji Hyun left a painting of a field of daisy behind on the bridge for him.

Every morning, he watches her from afar as she does her morning round of sketching for customers in the square. Due to his work as an international professional killer he kept his distance from Ji Hyun.

One day, a young Korean man, Lee Seong Jae, approached Ji Hyun for a sketch but he left before she could complete but promised to be back the next day. Ji Hyun completed it based on her memory so was able to hand it to him the next day. He was smittened by her and was soon at her shop with a pot of flowers. Ji Hyun mistakened him for her mysterious admirer and he did not want her to know he is not the man she was waiting for.
Soon, they became close and he often visited her in the square but one day, some men started walking quickly towards him. Lee Seong Jae was in actual fact an undercover Interpol agent and he was their target now.
Jung Woo Sung was, as usual, watching and he saw these armed men approaching Ji Hyun and Seong Jae who were unaware of their danger. Woo Sung fired at these gunmen and soon the square turned into a battlefield. Ji Hyun was shot in the throat in the cross fire.

Seong Jae was devastated that she was injured because of him but because he undercover status was exposed he could not remain in Holland and must leave Ji Hyun, who had lost her speech as a result of her injury.
Heart broken that Seong Jae had left her, she went through her days in a daze.
Unable to look at her constant lonely pain, Jung Woo Sung approached her daily and tried to fill the gap in her life left vacant when Seong Jae left her.
Despite the kindness of Woo Sung, Ji Hyun could not get over her love for Seong Jae and told him so in writing.
Still, Woo Sung continued to keep her company but one day Seong Jae turned up suddenly at her apartment while Woo Sung was there.

Thus, the stage was set for the girl caught in between the killer and the hunter. There can be only one end result.

While this is a fresh side of Jeon Ji Hyun, perhaps she chose the wrong vehicle to extend her dramatic range as the formula is pretty cliche. Still, pretty watchable because Jeon Ji Hyun is very pretty and watchable.
More info....

MV from Daisy

Cast:
Jeon Ji Hyun as Hye Young
Jung Woo Sung as Park Yi the assassin
Lee Seong Jae as Jeong Woo the Interpol agent
David Chiang as head of the assassin guild

Rating: 3/5
I had originally wanted to rate this show at 2 as it's not original in anyway but a ripoff off many Hongkong movies that cloned each other. But, as I'd mentioned, Jeon Ji Hyun is really very very sweet and pretty so giving in to this weakness, I revised my opinion of Daisy to 3/5

My Sassy Girl (Korean Movie)

The movie that launched the Korean Wave and the career of Jeon Ji-Hyun, the female lead.
Take a simple and common boy-meets-girl story, add a bit of Korean kimchi and it became a massive hit across Asia.

Young man (Cha Tae Hyun), wanting to meet the girl of his dreams takes the night train home and saved a drunken young girl (Jeon Ji-Hyun) from falling off the platform.
Inside the carriage she pukes all over a man and then passes out while calling out to Cha Tae Hyun "honey". Forced to take care of the girl by the other passengers who assumed he was her boyfriend, he carried her out of the station and to a motel. He's a nice guy so he didn't take advantage of her. Instead, he was taken to jail by a sudden police raid.
Getting home in the morning he gets beaten by his mother who disliked his constant staying out late. This time she's mad at him for not visiting his aunt who'd just lost her son.

Ji-Hyun calls him out to find out what happened to them the other night.
And thus, his adventures with this girl commences. She's not an ordinary girl but very wacky, hot tempered, prone to scolding strangers if she did not like their actions, and last but not least, violent towards Tae Hyun.
He tries to avoid her initially but always ended up together and he soon realises that despite her outwardly happy expression she seems to be hiding some deep sadness within.
He changes from a self-centred young man to one discovering the inner ability to feel caring, sympathy and the need to help others be happy even at some cost to himself. He learned to accept the unpredictable nature of his girlfriend and tries to please her, including bringing a single stalk of rose to her in class on her birthday, only to find out that her class was all girls and everyone looking at him as he walked towards her.

We can identify with this couple as we have gone through the stages of burgeoning love and all its insecurities. The story made me laugh and it made me cry as I too recollect my own past pain.

In the end, her own painful past forced her to leave Tae Hyun and they agreed to bury their letters to each other in a time capsule under a tree and meeting again 2 years later. What I could not stomach at this point was how Tae Hyun let her just walk away when he knew he does have feelings for her.
He spend those 2 years writing the story of how they met and the adventures they had together. That story was sold and made into a film.
The 2 years past quickly and he returned to the tree to wait for her but she did not come.
He returned often to that spot and even replaced the tree when it was killed in a lightning storm.

Not to spoil the story with the ending, I will let it end here but highly recommends this movie. The version is available with Chinese dialogue besides Korean and has English subtitle.

More info......

Cast:
Cha Tae Hyun

Jeon Ji-Hyun
(SPCNet forum)

Storyline

Rating: 4/5
Superb retelling of the age old romance story.