Review of Dream / 드림, directed by Lee Byeong-heon

Dream was one of those movies I knew existed out in the stratosphere, but just procrastinated on watching for a hot minute. I’m telling you, every time I opened up my Netflix it was right there in my suggested, mocking me and attempting to entice me to watch it. I don’t know but the first time I watched the trailer when it dropped, I simply wasn’t interested in this kind of movie.

It seemed like a high quality version of the low budget movies that Hollywood tends to crank out about faded sports stars, and the story, although it’s one that has a lot of merit (when do we get homeless representation that isn’t horrible), it’s a story we’ve seen before in some capacity.

But over the course of several nights I found myself bored and watched Dream in increments. For some reason I couldn’t bring myself to watch all of it in one go, so I had to split it up over thirty minute intervals or I would get really bored.

A bad sign for the movie, no doubt, for those of you who haven’t watched it yet, but I think I just couldn’t find myself hooked or invested into this movie. Yet I somehow ended up seeing like Mafia Mamma in its entirety after this.

Let’s get on with the review!

A soccer star on probation ends up coaching a team of homeless men for the Homeless World Cup—while a documentary is being made.

So in this movie, Park Seo-joon plays Hong-dae, who plays for one of the premier leagues of the Korean football league. The opener is about him on a game and feeling like he could never own up or catch up to one of his teammates, who steals all of the glory in his mind.

This puts him in a bad mood after the game, and when a reporter gets up in his face while they’re leaving, he ends up doing something that ends up getting Hong-dae disciplined and off the team for a while. In exchange, he now has to coach a team of homeless men for the Homeless World Cup abroad.

This team is having a documentary made about it, and Hong-dae and the girl making the documentary, Lee So-min, clash heads. She’s telling him to make up certain situations so they can get footage, and during the initial tryouts, it shows that only one of the men actually has any talent for football.

But because certain people have better stories for the overarching narrative, So-min tells Hong-dae to add them to the team despite having no talent.

Straight off the bat this creates a situation where it seems like Hong-dae has an impossible hill to climb, especially when the men are incapable of dribbling or even shooting the ball. What ends up happening next is a series of events that are calculated to maximize this film’s potential.

Some storylines go into the men themselves and their lives as homeless people, showing how they had families they left behind or are struggling day to day with how they got here. Another is about the documentary itself and how So-min wants to become a director.

The other narrative thread is that the only guy who knows how to play on the team gets injured, forcing Hong-dae to go out and recruit a kid who lurks in the subways looking for his missing friend.

The kid knows how to play under certain conditions, but things are looking up after they play a kid’s soccer team and manage to get themselves together to tie the score under an incredible series of circumstances.

Then they head off for the Homeless World Cup, but not after some drama in which Hong-dae ends up beating some high schoolers after they try to act like gangsters.

At the World Cup, the team struggles in their first match. So-min asks for some Brazilian reserves to play on the team, and they’re hogging the ball and scoring for them, but it leads to criticism about how none of the native Koreans are doing anything of substance.

In their final games, the Brazilians are benched and then the team begins to shine. Although they don’t end up winning, they’ve won the battle of becoming a decent team and win the audience favorite award.

The film then ends with Hong-dae getting his moment on the pitch with his club team with the homeless team cheering in the audience, So-min with them.

Overall Thoughts

It’s a cute movie, but I feel like it’s one of those examples of made for television movies. Out of Korean cinema, I’m not used to seeing those kinds of movies, and with the star power attached to this one, I think I lowkey expected something different at the end of the day.

But that’s time, taste is extremely subjective, so while I might not care for this film, another person might love it dearly. That’s the beauty of art—neither of us are right, nor wrong.

I think Dream is a decent feel good movie that makes people nod along, but it lacks the substance to go deeper beyond the superficial and corny elements.

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