Marathon

말아톤 (Marathon) is a South Korean movie directed by Jeong Yoon-chul and was released in January 2005. The movie is based on the real story of Bae Hyeong-jin and was the 4th most attended movie in South Korea in 2005.

Story: Yoon Cho-won is a young man with autism who's living with his mother and his younger brother Jung-won. His brother is sometimes jealous because of the attention Cho-won gets from their mother even though he learned to live with his disability in a society that doesn't deal with disabilities openly. The only way for Cho-won to find real joy and release is running. After placing third in a race his mother decides to hire a coach to train him for a marathon - and Cho-won's dream is to break the record.

Cast: Yoon Cho-won was played by Cho Seung-woo in this movie. His portrayal of an autistic character was realistic and therefore excellent. Also, Kim Mi-sook as Kyung-sook, Cho-won's mother, delivered an excellent performance. It seems these actors really did some serious research on the issues a family with an autistic child experiences.
Lee Ki-young as Coach Son Jung-wook represented a part of society in fact. As a character he didn't know how to deal with autism at first and he slowly learned about the disability and how to handle an autistic athlete. Though he was a minor character, his growth was impressive.
And Baek Sung-hyun is in this movie as Yoon Jung-won. While he didn't have that much screentime, his acting was stable - a jealous but also caring brother. Of course this might not have been his best role but it was good after all.


In the end my rating for this movie is 6/10 not because of the acting but it's simply a movie showing the life of a family. It's rather slow-paced, the story in itself is interesting but it was too long in some parts so it turned out to be a little boring with the duration of roughly two hours.