A Stray Goat

Complete waste of time, even during Covid. The "storyline" goes absolutely nowhere, with zero revenge factor.

As I sat down to watch the 2017 South Korean drama "A Stray Goat", I did so without ever having heard about the movie. I happened to have a chance to watch it, and since it was an Asian movie that I hadn't already seen, of course I took that opportunity.

Writer and director Jae Min Jo managed to put together a storyline here that had some rather nicely fleshed out characters. It was characters with strong personalities, traits, quirks and the like, which definitely made it feel like a very realistic movie. And the acting performances were quite good, and that helped the movie along quite nicely. The story itself, is somewhat of an acquired taste; I think you will either enjoy the storyline or you will find it soul-crushingly boring. I happened to like the storyline.

The narrative in "A Stray Goat" is slow paced, I will admit to that. So if you don't enjoy dramas of this kind, then you will definitely not enjoy writer and director Jae Min Jo's 2017 movie. And while I did enjoy the storyline, I will admit to the pacing of the movie being a bit too much on the slow side.

If you are into heavy character-driven dramas then "A Stray Goat" should be something for you. If not, then you might find yourself in for a slow paced sort of pointless movie with a story that seems to hardly matter.

"A Stray Goat" was so very nicely carried by lead actor Jinyoung Park (playing Min-Sik) and lead actress Ji Woo (playing Ye-Ju). I was especially impressed with the performance put on by Ji Woo, because she put on such an outstanding performance in this movie, and definitely made the movie all the more watchable.

Granted, a movie like "A Stray Goat" is not suitable for everyone in the audience, but I do believe that this is a movie well-worth watching, especially if you enjoy well-written dramas.

My rating of "A Stray Goat" lands on a six out of ten stars.

The type of movie that inspires you to be good by feeling awful.

Well crafted, and some loose ends ..

the list of "sins"

• conceptual incompetence (father)
• political incompetence (son)
• physical weakness (son)
• apathy (son)
• poor evaluation (mother ending up with father)
• depravity (most other boys/men)

Very heavy movie... almost feeling everything on your shoulders... depressing, dark, violent... almost deranged. Kind of a coming of age drama where everything goes wrong!

Good cinematography and acting but I will recommend it only for people who like slow burners and can handle injustice as something acceptable!

Translation of the movie was probably done using some translation software and it was one of the worst subtitles I ever used! Quite annoying reading something which sounded like a sentence from Yoda, not a teenager girl or boy.

The movie is not a perfect story and it is not meant to be that way. Life is unfair, it can be sad and cruel as well. Not every time, everyone gets a happy ending in life and the movie showcases that. The movie is sad, it just reflected the sad reality of life without any fancy dramatic elements. It is plain and raw, and that's what happens in real life too but people will not like it since people can't accept such raw truths of reality. Watch the movie for it's raw representation of life. The director doesn't intends to give a message. The movie has an open ending and it's on the viewers what they will learn from this movie, the movie will not spoon feed you the message. It's a good movie, there are not many dialogues but the silence will convey many things.