First of all, I’m not an SJK fan but I’m not a hater either - I don’t hate people, except maybe for a few world leaders at the moment :-(. I’m neutral where he is concerned.
This film just didn’t strike an emotional chord with me.
It all looked a bit amateurish to me. Maybe because of the sets and because the “Belgian” scenes were shot in Budapest. Brussels has a very different vibe than Budapest. The last scenes at the airport, sorry but that was so obvious that it was a set. Also, in official government buildings in Brussels, everything is always bilingual in French AND Dutch. So here, a bit more research would have helped. The gangster scene was just laughable and the European gangsters very stereotyped.
Storywise, too many topics addressed without really going deeper into them (reading further from here means SPOILERS).
But what bothers me most of all is: how on earth would he have obtained refugee status when he ran out of his own court case! Most of the time I got the feeling that I was watching a KBS K-drama instead of a movie, because of the sets that were used and some topics that were apparently solved so easily in the end (like Marie’s drug habit). Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have anything against KBS K-dramas, because they don’t pretend to be more than they are, viz. a daily moment of escapism and guilty pleasure. And to me that is what this film (or the creators) do, they pretend to be more than they are. If they wanted to make a human interest film, they should have restricted the topics to the refugee theme and the love story. The themes of drug habit, euthanasia, the gangster circle Marie was caught up in… it all felt like topics piled on the heap. So sorry but overall the film felt unrealistic and immature to me.

I rated the music because you have to but I didn’t pay attention to it honestly.

The good thing about it all is that I definitely want to read the book now. From the synopsis I have read, I think that is going to be far more interesting and realistic.