Audition 109 (2025)

Busan Dream

Jung Woo is Jjang-gu. He is not merely acting the character — the character actually represents him and his real-life story. I didn’t know that before watching the movie.

Audition 109 starts like a classic Korean action comedy, so I was expecting action scenes to begin at any moment, but they never came. Instead, the movie turned out to be a slice-of-life drama with a good amount of comedy. It was enjoyable to watch, but it felt like the film didn’t have a clear direction. However, knowing that it is largely a biographical movie, made the story development feel much more understandable.

Jjang-gu continues attending auditions and failing every single one of them, while also trying to build a healthy social life with roughly the same level of success. Yet he stubbornly keeps pursuing his dream, showing truly commendable and inspiring resilience. The production quality is very good. There’s also a surprising number of guest actors I hadn’t seen in a long time. The movie features plenty of footage of Busan — its clubs, restaurants, and especially the delicious-looking plates of meals.

If you know who Jung Woo is, you should definitely watch this. After checking his filmography, it appears I’ve seen all of his movies, and it was really nice to get to know him better through this feature.

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