I wanted to but couldn't!

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

What a movie! What an environment! Acting of every, even the small and limited characters act like lively. It seems I am seeing the real story not the movie. Direction, back-ground score, cinematography are excellent. Yet I am sorry about them whoever are the real victims and their families. Five children, age 8 to 12 like that, disappeared, at once, together. Story 1991, South Korea. I have seen this kind of movie, Memories of Murders, which is almost similar. Memories of Murders is one of my favorites. Children... 2001 is also now my favorites one. This movie will grip you till the last moment. You feel the same as the victims' families. You feel the same as the detectives, as the other people of the movie.

This is a true story about the murder of five children in Daegu region, South Korea. The evolution of the case throughout the movie is what you could expect of korean cinema: the solving of the murder is hugely important, but what matters the most are the characters that surround the case. their families, a TV producer, a cop and a psychology professor(i assume). Obviously they are well developed, they show truthful and devastating emotions, they change their own behaviors and actions during the film.Koreans know very well how to built intense atmospheres, and how to drive their characters inside them. They have density, they sound like real people, we can relate to them very easily. We can almost feel their grief, we can understand how an ambitious producer fallen from grace start as a selfish guy who just wants a good story, evolves into a guy who almost take this personal. We can see truth in the professor's theories, we can cope with the (sometimes questionable) efforts of the families, in order to oblige the police looking for their children.This is a well built movie, which is not a huge breath of fresh air in korean cinema, but it's one of those films who prove that south Korea has one of the best cinemas in the world. you really should check this one out.

Another example of fine filmmaking from Korea, Children begins with elementary school boys playing together, like kids everywhere, running and laughing, without a care in the world. The mood changes quickly when they are reported missing, and a search involving thousands of volunteers is undertaken with no results. The parents quit their jobs to look for their sons full time. A television producer who has won a prize for his nature documentary gets into trouble when his boss finds out that he faked some of the scenes in his film, and he is demoted and transferred. He wants to regain his reputation, so he teams up with a college professor to solve the case of the missing boys. They come up with a theory that one boys parents were involved and they get the police to help dig up the fathers property to find the buried bodies. Nothing is found and the TV man and the prof are disgraced. Ten years after the original disappearances, a monsoon and flooding reveals some bones, which after forensic exams, turn out to be the five boys. The police quickly try to rule the cause of death as hypothermia because of embarrassment in not solving the case, but the coroner concludes that they were murdered. The TV producer returns to follow up and becomes tied up with a possible suspect. The ending is somewhat ambiguous and I was left wondering about the real story that the movie is based on. The acting is superb, but at over two hours, Children could have been edited by fifteen minutes, as it is too slowly paced. Even with the small criticisms, it is a shattering drama.

The movie tells the story of what happened early 1990's in Korea, as 5 elementary school students never returned from their walk to a nearby mountain.Based on true events and dedicated to the family who lost their children, this movie definitely succeeds at its goal. To make people be a witness of what happened 20 years ago and to be part of what emotional horror the family and everyone involved went through and still have to go through.You will stay focused from the start to the end thanks to great directing and acting. Just when you think the movie will wrap up, it will make a sudden twist and turn everything upside down. Korea once again shows how to make a great movie that is based on true events.Although this movie feels a lot like Memories of Murder (that also is based on true events in Korea), it is yet totally different and not as perfect, but still a great watch.A must watch for anyone who enjoys a great crime movie.My score: 9/10