After all the domestic movies featuring gangster jokes, pretty couples' romances and violent and rebellious teenagers' school lives, you may be craving for a healthier diet of more diversified films.
If all these reproductions of the same old stories in similar genres have decreased your appetite for Korean films, at first glance, the new movie "Lump sugar" (Kaksoltang) may seem to be what you have been longing for.
"Lump sugar" is the first domestic film that features a dynamic horse race, and its main theme _ a friendship between a female jockey and her horse _ seems to promise a touching story.
But the film cannot fully satisfy your appetite due to its predictable story, without any strong dramatic hooks, which will remind you of some mainstream Hollywood films driven by similar themes.
Directed by Lee Hwan-gyeong and starring actress Im Soo-jeong, the film revolves around Si-eun (played by Lim), who dreams of becoming a famous jockey.
Born on a horse ranch, Si-eun spends most of her time with horses _ she especially loves a horse named Changgun, which her mother loved before she died.
Changgun dies while giving birth and Si-eun, feeling sympathy for the foal, takes care of him, naming him Chundung, which means thunder in Korean.
But as her father doesn't want his daughter to become a jockey, he sells Chundung without telling her and insists that she attend university like other girls.
Two years pass and Si-eun becomes a jockey without her father's approval, but she experiences discrimination because she is a woman.
One day, she encounters Chundung on a street where he is pulling a wagon promoting a dance club. Si-eun takes him to her racing team and trains him for the National Cup.
The story unfolds without many ups and downs, but the audience can easily guess what will happen next.
Everything is so familiar, and you can feel the many hidden tearjerker traps. The horseracing scenes in the movie are also not as dynamically portrayed as those in Hollywood movies.
Sidus FNH, the production company of "Lump sugar", had announced the release of two moving dramas this year _ but the first project "My Piano" didn't really win the hearts of the audience due to its plain and rather predictable storyline, even though it was an ambitious attempt to make an unusual movie about music.
And, overall, "Lump sugar" seems to follow its precedent _ it's hard to find big flaws in the film, but due to its plain storyline it ends up being a film with little strength despite a few enjoyable elements.
English 
US$5 off (order min. US$5)
