Disappointing
While this film did bring up a the important social issue of the South Korean justice system's blase attitude toward rape victims, I felt it was overall disappointing. (Most of the following is from my review for a different South Korean film, Azooma)
"Don't Cry Mommy", is a South Korean crime thriller about a mother whose teenage daughter is gang raped by some boys at her school. The movie played out in the typical "revenge movie" style, but while I was disgusted by the rape itself, I was even more disgusted with how it was presented. The mother in that film cried and flailed her way through everything, and only killed one of the rapist by mere chance after getting the $hit beat out of her first. This happened repeatedly throughout the film, the mother sobbing and grabbing at the rapists and getting severely assaulted by them in return, and it really presented us with a weak image of women as victims who cannot protect themselves or those they love with anything more than blind luck.
A better film, in my opinion, that covers the same territory without being so demeaning to women is Azooma, a South Korean crime thriller also released in 2012, which deals with a mother tracking down the man who raped her (elementary school-aged) daughter. Azooma's protagonist is anything but a luck dependent femme fatal. Although we see her heart-wrenching pain and guilt as the result of her daughter's attack, and the emotional strain she feels as those who SHOULD be her helpers (the police, her ex-husband, etc) are the ones most hindering justice against the rapist (in this case, a serial child molester). And while that emotion overflowed into tears in several scenes, they were tears of rage against the situation, not tears of helpless depression.
Throughout the film, we see how her frustration with the authorities lead her to track down the rapist on her own, and she does a DAMN fine job of it! No, she is not Batman, able to manhandle her quarry to the ground by sheer strength of force, but she uses her brain and her resources to take care of the problem, and I think that presents a more realistic picture. As an average woman myself, (not a body builder or karate expert) I know that it is very unlikely I could take down anyone with my bare hands male or female alike. But I sure as hell could call a hitman! The ability to think rationally, through her pain and emotion, was what made this film 100x more impressive than the other.
I highly recommend Azooma over Don't Cry Mommy, but be careful, the ending is (awesomely) brutal.