Title: 신의 선물 - 14일 Shineui Sunmool - 14 Il
English Title: God's Gift - 14 Days
Country: South Korea
Language: Korean
Year: 2014
Episode: 16
Cast:
- 이보영 Lee Bo Young
- 조승우 Cho Seung Woo
- 김태우 Kim Tae Woo
- 정겨운 Jung Gyeo Woon
- 김유빈 Kim Yoo Bin
- 차선우 Cha Sun Woo (바로 Ba Ro)
- 노민우 No Min Woo
- 한선화 Han Sun Hwa
SYNOPSIS
Concerned about the recent news reports about missing children found dead, worried mom Kim Soo Hyun nags her trusting daughter Han Saet Byul to be wary about strangers.
Soo Hyun works as a writer on an investigative show, and she conducts research on a special project about the serial killer who has killed three women in three days. Soo Hyun brings her daughter to work at the broadcast station, and she loses track of Saet Byul while she was running errands.
Soo Hyun's show has gone on air when she finds out that her daughter is missing. An unidentified man calls the show claiming to be the serial killer, and he passes the phone to a scared child whom Soo Hyun immediately recognizes as her daughter.
Saet Byul's kidnapper demands KRW2 billion in exchange for Saet Byul''s life, and Soo Hyun willingly does everything she can to meet the kidnapper's terms. After Soo Hyun unsuccessfully negotiates with the kidnapper and begs him to spare her daughter's life, Soo Hyun and her husband Han Ji Hoon were told by the police to prepare for the worst-case scenario. The next day, a fisherman finds a child's dead body in a lake and contacts the police.
Soo Hyun tries to kill herself in the lake where her daughter died. She wakes up, remembering everything that happened, strangely around fourteen days prior to Saet Byul's kidnapping. Although shaken and disoriented, Soo Hyun is determined to keep her daughter safe and alive.
REVIEW
God's Gift - 14 Days is about a mother's unconditional love for her child. Unfortunately, in order to showcase such wholehearted parental feelings exhausted to the extreme, selfless mother Kim Soo Hyun goes through her daughter Han Saet Byul's kidnapping and death.
It is a difficult drama to watch because kidnappings, murders, and serial killings do happen; and kidnappers, murderers, and serial killers do exist. Although I am aware that I am watching a fictional account, I am constantly reminded of how these incidents happen to real people.
Time is magically turned back for Soo Hyun and she goes back fourteen days prior to her daughter's kidnapping, giving Soo Hyun a chance to change history. But an important issue the drama raises is that, can anyone actually change one's fate even if he is given an opportunity to do so?
Based on what happened in God's Gift - 14 Days, it doesn't seem possible to change fate, and it seems that whatever should happen will happen. But given that Soo Hyun has the benefit of knowing how things would end the second time around, she can only work so hard on getting her desired outcome and hope that her hard work makes a difference.
The drama is a mystery thriller, and the clues are laid out in the production in order to find out who the suspect is as well as why he committed the crime.
There are a lot of suspicious individuals, but I have narrowed down the suspect as early as the first couple of episodes. I think the clues are quite telling early on, with one potential suspect blanking out (not knowing what he did and where he was) for a couple of hours, and having a little girl's hair tie in his possession without knowing how he got it.
Anyway, the remaining mystery as I watched the drama is why the suspect committed the crime and how he did it. I predicted that the suspect has multiple personality disorder, and one of his personalities is doing the serial killing. The scenario I had in mind is not what actually happened in the drama, but it definitely seemed more interesting.
Considering that the production has to complicate matters by including a lot of red herring clues, and the viewers speculate endlessly about the case, it is sometimes inevitable that what actually happens will be somewhat of a let down. I am a bit disappointed with God's Gift - 14 Days, because I was looking forward to a much more striking ending considering the elaborate build-up.
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신의 선물 - 14일 (God's Gift - 14 Days)
