This will circle back to "The Kidnapping Day" but it will be a bit of a scenic route.

It's easy to pinpoint the scene that transformed Bill Murray from one of many cast contributors on an after-dark weekend sketch comedy show. Sure, he was already known as one of the charter members of Saturday Night Live but he was anything but a bankable movie star. But one modestly budgeted, lightly raunchy summer camp comedy changed that. In the late 1970's and early 1980's, the summer camp setting was became one of Hollywood's favorite locations for everything from horror to teen drama to comedy. In 1979, the poor ragtag kids camp up against the rich, spoiled kids on the other side of the lake was the basis for one such movie. In "Meatballs", Bill Murray played the first of the many iterations of the sardonic, sarcastic, lazy, laconic and acidic cool loner. And like in many other of these roles, the centerpiece of the role is an extended monologue where he sheds his aloofness and delivers a fiery speech to rally his followers to new heights.

The rest of "Meatballs"? Pretty generic stuff. But the monologue from Murray is spectacular. Much of it is simply repeating over and over and over again "It just doesn't matter!". Screaming the same phrase at the top of his lungs. It just doesn't matter. Repeatedly. It just doesn't matter. Again and again and again.

It just doesn't matter.

"The Kidnapping Day" is a drama, unsurprisingly, about a kidnapping. Myeong Jun, a dad down on his luck with a critically sick daughter, kidnaps Ro Hee, the daughter of a rich doctor, hoping to ransom er for enough money to pay for his daughter's surgery. But nothing goes as planned because nothing in Myeong Jun's life does. As things spiral out of control, there's almost everything but aliens and ghosts and mermaids thrown in. Murders. Crooked police. Power hungry wealthy families. Stoic killers. Mouthy bad guys. Unethical medical experimentation. Orphanages. Slums. Mansions. Hospitals. Boats. Beaches. There's so many elements that it's impossible to coherently piece them together.

It just doesn't matter.

The rich family floats in and out when necessary as a plot device but they're mostly there to advance some forward action by the bad guy. The bad guy is basically a mouthy venture capitalist. He's not a flop as a villain, but it's a fairly generic character. The crooked cops are even less prominent than the rich family.

It just doesn't matter.

Kim Sang Ho plays a critical support role but the script asks far too little of him and it's one of his least compelling performances. The problem is less severe with Kim Shin Rok's Hye Eun (Myeong Jun's ex wife). She's meant to be a morally ambiguous character, part regretful mother and part brilliant schemer. But the mother side is never convincing and the schemer side rarely makes sense. If she's supposed to be in hiding, why would she wear some of the most garish outfits in the Eastern Hemisphere? Why has she anticipated so many things but left an absolutely vital item unaddressed until far too late? And for a character that viewers should be on the fence about, she's indefatigably unlikable. The performance by Shin Rok is solid but she's too often asked to do things with the character that are, even in the most charitable light, confounding.

But it just doesn't matter.

Even Park Sung Hoon who has been on a tear of scintiallating performances in 2023 with terrific performances in "The Glory" and as an unconventional police officer in "Not Others" comes across flat here. It's the maverick cop with a heart of gold. And it's not a fresh take on the archetype.

Guess what? It just doesn't matter.

The plot meanders through the kidnapping, the morally murky medical people, the venture capitalists, the police, the power hungry family and ends up with a weak final confrontation. A cliffhanger from the end of one episode transitions to a completely different place and an almost total absence of a resolution to a main character on the verge of death. The police are dumb when it's convenient that they be dumb. And then they wise up at the most convenient time. The crime scene is abandoned. Literally. The investigators take the bodies and apparently then just leave. It's bizarrely implausible.

One last time. It just doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter because the characters of Ro Hee and Myeong Jun and the performances by Yoon Kye Sang and 12 year old Yuna are transcendent. They are magical when they are together and the moments when they are pulled from each other are heartbreaking. It's an oddball pair, the rich girl from a sheltered life and a guy with a lifetime of fumbling away his chances at every opportunity. For Yoon Kye Sang, it is without question and by a considerable margin his best work of recent vintage. And for Yuna? It's a performance that can hardly be believed to have been rendered by someone of such young age. Among non-romantic relationships that have been portrayed in this genre, it is in acutely rarefied air. And it is why all of the other things just don't matter.

Minor items:

It is always welcome to see Kang Ha Neul in a brief but excellent cameo.

Same with Kim Di Doo.

Kim Dong Won does a nice job with the nearly mute assassin with unclear loyalties role quite nicely.

It just doesn't matter? Actually, nah. Not at all.

"The Kidnapping Day" is a tremendously entertaining drama thanks to the lead performances and it is highly, highly recommended watch.