Journalist, Author & Syndicated Columnist
Two Korean men move to Suriname in the hopes of making some fast money. Their goal is to buy skate, which Surinamese don’t want, for pennies and resell them in South Korea at an inflated price. But when cocaine is found in one of their shipments, both men are arrested and jailed.
In a review that ran in the New York Times, film critic Jeannette Catsoulis gave “Ode to My Father” a big thumbs down for being “syrupy” and for having “packaged pain … likely to leave Western audiences cold.” While there is no doubt that director Yoo Je-Kyoon would’ve loved for American audiences to embrace his movie, it’s also undeniable that this film was not made with Western moviegoers in mind. It was made for Koreans.