A millionaire’s first love is a 2006 South Korean film that tells the tragic love story of two young people who belong to different worlds. From their first appearance on the scene, as well as from their first interaction, in fact, we notice how Kang Jae-kyun (Hyun Bin) is an arrogant and reckless scion, who does not know how to relate to others and solves all his problems with money, while Choi Eun-hwan (Lee Yeon-hee) is a simple and kind-hearted person.

The film in Korea is considered a “classic”, but overall I didn’t like it at all. The plot is full of holes, events or unmotivated actions, but above all it presents many clichés typical of South Korean cinematography:

1 – first of all, the main characters represent the unoriginal characters of the arrogant and rich man and the good but poor girl. Both seem to come from the 1980s, due to their hairstyles and the unrealistic initial kung-fu sequence that could have been avoided altogether.
Some scenes depicting the change of the main character are still very nice, such as the one in which Jae-kyun (Hyun Bin) realizes how even $10 can make more than one person happy.

2 – Grandparents and their legacies: in many Japanese and Korean films and dramas of the last decade there is often the figure of a grandfather who, dead or alive, forces his grandchildren to do something against their will, under penalty of loss of benefits and inheritance. One almost thinks that the ease of their lives pushes them to invent the most absurd ideas that…always turn out to be for a good purpose.

3 – If you look at the first snow with the person you love, then it is true love and will last forever…a pity for those who are in countries where it never snows…

4 – The noble idiocy: usually when a character leaves the loved one for “his sake”, often without even an explanation, he is justified in some way, but here, within ten minutes, the protagonist changes twice idea without there being external factors to influence it, and this leaves us somewhat bewildered.

5 – The childhood connection, which occurs when the two protagonists have already met in childhood, thus maintaining a sort of “connection” during the adult life that makes them somehow “destined” for each other. Very often, as happens in this story, the childhood of the protagonists is also characterized by a more or less important childhood trauma.
What I found comical was that Jae-kyun (Hyun Bin) only realizes he loves Eun-hwan (Lee Yeon-hee) when he remembers her presence in his childhood…as if the two were connected, or as if a child’s speech and feelings can still be the same as an adult! If it weren’t for this meaningless falling in love, the scenes between the two lovers could have also been enjoyable, but you can’t really identify with them and their love because no pathos was created. I was not at all fond of the couple, so much so that I hoped twice that the female lead would die so that the film would end quickly!

6 – The fatality of the disease: the female character, if she is good-hearted and ill, is destined to die. For this reason, every moment of love and affection is lived almost as if it were the last – in this regard, I appreciated the scene of the pills with cute phrases in a jar.

A millionaire’s first love turned out to be, in short, a film that totally disappointed my expectations, both in terms of the story, which could be handled much better, and in terms of the acting. Only Hyun Bin actually seems to be immune to total disaster and, despite his young age, shows he has good acting skills.