Over My Dead Body is a 2012 Korean film. I really wanted to like this movie, and, there was a good deal to like about it on an individual basis. As a whole though, it's a bit of a mess.
SPOILERS AHEAD!
Here's your story: Tech company president tries to steal top secret microchip to sell oversees, but dies before he can do so. An engineer working for the tech company gets in a car accident, and his daughter and the accident victim's young co-worker need to find a way to make some money, so they decide to kidnap the company president's corpse and hold it for ransom. Unbeknownst to them however, the top secret microchip is embedded in the dead president's body. At the same time, a petty con man hatches a plan with morgue worker to steal the microchip by switching bodies at the morgue, so they can sell the chip themselves. The daughter and co-worker end up stealing the wrong "switched" body (who is actually the living petty con man). Eventually, the aforementioned trio end up working together to come up with one new scheme after another in order to 'get paid'. Meanwhile, the morgue worker has his own plans, there's some loan sharks chasing after the petty con man, the president's family is using their resources to recover the dead body, an international group of investors/crooks hire some "spies" to find the microchip at any cost, and the NIS (Korean CIA/NSA) is after everybody. WHEW!!!!
As complicated as the story summary above may seem, this movie is actually quite easy to follow and isn't really confusing at all. The problem lies with the fact that there are just way too many story lines going on to make this film work in a coherent and effective manner As a result; this movie is constantly reduced to bouncing back and forth between one story line to the next, and merges plots and characters arcs together seemingly at will.
To me, this movie seems to want to present itself as some type of comedic mad dash caper/grab the cash story in the mold of something similar to "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World". At the same time, this film also wants to try to tell some coherent semi-dramatic story along the way. Unfortunately, you can't really have it both ways, and I think this film shows why that is the case.
There are quite a few good aspects in regards to this film though: overall production is very solid, acting by the entire cast is strong throughout, and several stand alone acts are effective and done quite well. It does have its warts though, particularly so as it draws to a close.
Bottom Line: This film has some good individual performances and scenes throughout, but I think the end sum is clearly less than its parts. It was ultimately perhaps a bit too much of an ambitious project to successfully pull off. If the story & plot were streamlined a bit, and the talented cast was given a bit more reign & freedom, it could have been much better. But, it is what it is!
I'm giving it 6 out of 10 stars!
