"What if people are forced to die when they get to 50?" is a very very interesting concept that can lead to amazing storytelling. The main actress (Keira Jang) and Sandra Oh are brilliant here.
But the issue is that the screenplay tries very hard to explain and even advocate for the reason for its "what if" scenario and the flaws in that idea end up being very blatant. What could have been a great story with a mysterious background ends up being a silly attempt at advocating for a flawed idea.
In the Q&A after the movie, Laurel Sprengelmeyer said something that summarizes this one for me: "We often see movies about love, but not documentaries. This is a documentary about love".
An extremely powerful story that certainly needed to be told. Yet this doc manages to tell it in such an awful way.
There is an attempt to show "both sides" of the story with interviews with family members from policemen taken hostage and government officials, yet there is no depth at that and it only ruins the narrative. I mean, after seeing the scenes at the end, showing tears from hostage's family members is extremely inappropriate.
Also, the narrative tries to follow a straight line by going through the days of the riot but they keep backtracking and the tension build-up is gone.
