Review – Along With the Gods: The Last 49 Days

If you thought the previous movie had a tear-jerker ending, wait until you watch this one!

What happens when your past catches up with you, even a thousand years later? The last time we saw Gang-rim (Ha Jung-woo), Hae Won-maek (Ju Ji-hoon), and Lee Deok-choon (Kim Hyang-gi), the three Grim Reapers had successfully escorted their latest soul through the Afterlife and to reincarnation. Now they need to shepherd his younger brother, Kim Soo-hong (Kim Dong-wook), through the same seven Hells to get him reincarnated.

There are a couple of things to note about this situation: one, Soo-hong was murdered and subsequently became a vengeful spirit in the last movie. This means there is no proof in the Afterlife of his murder or of him being a paragon, yet he has a paragon ticket to get through the Afterlife. Wow, that’s weird, isn’t it?

A second issue is that Soo-hong is perfectly happy being dead. Even though escorting him to reincarnation means the Grim Reapers could finally be reincarnated themselves, as he would be their 49^th paragon, Soo-hong would prefer to stay in the Afterlife. Why go back to the living world and endure all that suffering all over again?

The third problem is that Gang-rim not only bent the rules figuring out how Soo-hong died in the living world, he saved Soo-hong rather than destroy his soul, as the law of the Afterlife dictates. Hae Won-maek and Lee Deok-choon know he did this because he explicitly told them to stay in the Afterlife to protect Soo-hong’s older brother, firefighter Kim Ja-hong (Cha Tae-hyun). Except that during the first movie, Hae Won-maek seemed to disobey Gang-rim’s order and tried to destroy Soo-hong’s soul while he was still a vengeful spirit.

Gang-rim figured out it was not Hae Won-maek who did this, though. It was Yeomra, king of the gods and the Afterlife, posing as Hae Won-maek to apparently test Gang-rim. But instead of flattening Gang-rim, revoking his and the others’ guardianship, and tossing them all into one of the Hells for bending the rules like this, Yeomra let them go and win their case to get Ja-hong reincarnated. Why? What is he doing impersonating Hae Won-maek and setting them up with yet another (supposed) paragon to shepherd through the Hells to achieve their own reincarnation?

In an effort to solve this mystery and secure reincarnation for all and sundry, Gang-rim puts it all on the line, promising to prove that Soo-hong was murdered by two of his fellow Republic of Korea soldiers. Given Soo-hong’s records were purged once he became a vengeful spirit, this is not going to be easy, and matters are not helped by one of Yeomra’s conditions: He wants Gang-rim and his fellow Reapers to go to the mortal world and ascend an old man living with his grandson. The old man is overdue to die but all the other Reapers whom Yeomra has sent to collect his soul have been forcibly evicted from the home by the house god, Seongju (Ma Dong-seok), who has taken up residence with the family. Since none of them have ever returned, it’s likely Seongju has killed these other Reapers in this process of forcible eviction.

Oh, and if our Reapers fail to either prove Soo-hong was murdered or to ascend the old man, they will forfeit their guardianship and their own reincarnations.

Hae Won-maek is aghast when not only Gang-rim but Lee Deok-choon agree to these terms. It’s an impossible task all the way around, as house god trumps guardian easily and there is no way to prove Soo-hong’s murder without recourse to the mortal world. But Gang-rim is determined to make the most of the 49 days they have to get Soo-hong through the Afterlife. With just over a month to win this imperative case, he sends Hae Won-maek and Lee Deok-choon to the living world to handle the house god and the old man while he brings Soo-hong through the Hells.

Only Hae Won-maek and Lee Deok-choon do not fare any better against the house god than the previous Reapers did. The sole reason they survive their encounter with Seongju is that he knows them and has a soft spot for them. Why?

He knows who they were in their past lives. The memories they have lost and cannot access without help, he can reveal to them.

While Lee Deok-choon is wondering how they are going to fulfill their commission now, Hae Won-maek sees an opportunity. He strikes a deal with Seongju: they’ll leave the old man alone long enough to help his grandson get into school and even help the house god deal with the debtors preying on him, if he will reveal their past lives to them. Up against humans, the house god can do very little, so he agrees to the deal.

But recalling past lives means recalling past sins, both those committed by the Reapers and those committed against them. As Gang-rim drags a reluctant Soo-hong through or past each Hell, he tells the young soul what happened to him a thousand years in the past to keep the young man semi-quiescent. With secrets long buried coming to light, will the guardians be able to continue to work together? And given they still have a soul to take and a soul to reincarnate, will the things they learn jeopardize their shot at reincarnation now, when they are so close to fulfilling Yeomra’s original conditions?

Along With the Gods: Two Worlds was a good reminder that not everyone is perfect even if they are “perfect.” In the prior movie viewers saw a sin that had been committed to but never carried out, and regretted for the rest of Ja-hong’s life. But what happens when a soul does not perform a sin of commission but a sin of omission?

The actors and story really sell Along With the Gods: The Last 49 Days more than the CGI or the filmography. Ha Jung-woo once again dominates the screen as Gang-rim, the solid, stone-faced lawyer who slowly comes unraveled the longer he has to deal with a soul who reminds him of things he can never, ever forget. Of all the performances in The Last 49 Days, his is perhaps the most magnetic out of a cast it is impossible to look away from.

Ju Ji-hoon and Kim Hyang-gi, meanwhile, get to show their own acting chops by flitting between their characters’ modern position as Reapers and their past lives in Medieval Korea. The duo provide a masterclass along with the rest of the movie in setup and payoff as the hints that viewers did not notice in movie one flower fully in movie two. Ma Dong-seok also should have won an award for his performance as the house god Seongju, since he switches from deadly warrior to comedic relief with an ease that belies just how hard going through those extremes is, adding the right level of pathos and bathos to his interactions with Ju and Kim.

Most of all, though, the theme of the film directly addresses the fact that far too many people worry about committing sins. They think very little about the sins that take no overt action or obvious choice to commit. While there are a great many artistic touches in the film, the acting is top notch, and the story is good, this is where the movie really shines. Not in considering an action taken but in focusing on an action that should have been taken...and was not.

That untaken action led to other decisions that were executed, and were just as bad or worse than the action not taken early on. As one good decision ripples outward and changes the world for the better, one taken for selfish reasons has the opposite effect, as the friend who suggested this film to me said. He was right, and this movie is well and truly worth watching for that particular message. It is not just actions taken for which we have to answer in the afterlife but actions which we should have taken and did not that we will need to answer for.

Like the song says, if tomorrow is too late, how can you ask forgiveness for what you did – or did not – do? Nickelback’s “If Today was Your Last Day” has more than one connotation, but particularly in the West, we do not stop to think about that anymore. The Last 49 Days is practically a slap across the face to 70 plus years of storytelling meant to encourage apathetic inaction that leads nowhere except a brief sense of unearned virtue.

A trend promoting sins of omission cannot help but reel from a film that potently and pointedly calls out such “non-actions” that are themselves choices. You can claim to be “on the fence,” “neutral,” or that you “don’t want to get involved” but that does not mean you have absolved yourself of committing to an action. Inaction is a choice – and it has a result, one for which you are responsible. That will have ripple effects on you, on those you care for, and others adjacent to you and your loved ones.

Taking no action is sometimes worse than taking action, too. Do you really want that on your conscience, asks The Last 49 Days? If not, ask forgiveness while you can. You may not get another chance before it is too late.

So grab Along With the Gods: The Last 49 Days and give it a viewing. You will be the better for it, I promise. This is one film that deserves to reach a much wider market than it has so far, especially if we want to see film three and a TV series. This serial deserves to be completed on the screen – small, silver, or both!