The First Ride: A Second "First Trip" Carrying the Weight of Trauma

You can find the original article in Hungarian here →

* Warning: This post contains spoilers! *

In 2025, director Nam Dae-joong returned to the theme of his first feature film shot ten years earlier: friendship. However, while The Last Ride was a story of preparing for a traumatic event, The First Ride is a drama about surviving and processing trauma.

As we could admire in his first drama, the director has crafted a comedy despite the heavy subject matter—specifically, a vibrant, sparkling piece that plays with all sorts of comic situations, even more complex and twisty than his previous film. Yet, in the very first sentence spoken, he warns us: we are about to see a sad story...

(Author’s screenshot from The First Ride.)

... of which there is initially no trace. Now we meet four young men; thus, D'Artagnan joins the three musketeers in the form of Yeon-min (Cha Eun-woo), a perpetually lonely boy whom they took under their wing in elementary school. They become inseparable, despite being very different characters. Tae-jung (Kang Ha-neul), aspiring to be president, is an eminent student and an excellent fighter. Geum-bok (Kang Young-seok) hates studying and doesn’t quite know what to do with himself, so he is constantly guided by his Buddhist monk mother. Do-jin (Kim Young-kwang) is a rather strange, introverted boy who lost his zest for life after having to give up basketball due to an injury. Yeon-min considers himself insignificant, believing there is some ridiculous oddity about him that draws others' attention—he doesn’t even suspect that people actually admire him for his beauty. Finally, he finds what truly interests him: he wants to become a world-class DJ. This hobby enchants Do-jin as well, bringing the two even closer. We get a glimpse into the boys' family dynamics and their struggles to become who they want to be. Thus, we approach graduation, when the quartet decides to go on a trip together to Thailand before they are separated by further education. They choose this destination specifically because the DJ they idolize is performing there. The trip is also significant because Yeon-min's family is moving to New Zealand, making their separation inevitable.

They pull out all the stops to win their parents' support, which they eventually achieve. Yet, the trip falls through because, in a ridiculous turn of events, they miss the bus that would take them to the airport. They are forced to return home, and Yeon-min departs from them.

We learn all this before the opening credits, through Yeon-min's narration. We meet them again ten years later. Tae-jung is a secretary to a Member of Parliament; Geum-bok is tattooing in his mother’s temple and preparing for his monk ordination; however, we find Do-jin in a hospital, where he has been treated for psychotic symptoms for years. Nevertheless, their friendship hasn't faded; they continue to see each other. They also take care of Do-jin, who hears news that their former favorite DJ is performing for the last time, and thus initiates a plan to fulfill their dream from ten years ago.

(Author’s screenshot from The First Ride.)

(Author’s screenshot from The First Ride.)

Soon the team is ready for the journey, but Do-jin drags along a life-sized figure reminiscent of Yeon-min, and they are joined by Ok-sim (Han Sun-hwa), who has been in love with Tae-jung since childhood. We receive no explanation as to what happened to whom and how; instead, we are plunged into countless messy adventures, mainly due to our heroes' inexperience and clumsiness. These are all hazards and escapes fit for a comedy. We drop from one action into the next, all while perceiving that these young men treat each other with intense care—much of which is directed toward the truly eccentric Do-jin.

The director simply leads us on. We are already past two-thirds of the film—having been unsuspectingly entertained until then, even feeling that a sense of fulfillment had been reached—when our heroes suddenly find themselves in a situation of genuine life-threatening danger. And then something happens: what the director warned us about at the beginning occurs—we are, in fact, watching a sad story. We learn what caused Do-jin's mental collapse, and the moment of truth arrives when he must face what happened. The old tragedy unfolds before us, and the present threatens a new one. However, the bond of friendship overrides all fears, rescuing everyone from danger: both the living and those imagined to be alive. Facing trauma has a healing power, so nothing remains for our heroes but to return to their everyday lives, navigating the labyrinths of workplace relations and romances.

(Author’s screenshot from The First Ride.)

By accepting reality, the four friends can be together again, including Yeon-min, who towers over them in the form of a living tree, while the narrator of the concluding segment is the recovered Do-jin. And after the closing credits, we hear the farewell of Geum-bok, who has become a Buddhist monk: "Leave mindfully/carefully!"—which simultaneously seems to say that after the life-fable we just witnessed, it is now our turn to take care of our own lives.

(Author’s screenshot from The First Ride.)

Each of the lead actors navigates the director's complex "sandbox" excellently; they do not lose their way between the realms of comedy and tragedy. However, Kim Young-kwang must be highlighted among them, as he brings Do-jin’s complex character to life with infinite naturalness. He has never played simple roles, but he has now significantly enriched that lineup with a completely new personality.

Nam Dae-joong, who once again serves as both writer and director, set the bar high and successfully cleared it. For a while, it may seem as though he is leading the story into chaos, but with the final twist, he resolves everything beautifully. And most importantly: amidst the loudness, he once again succeeds in making us part of a deep and heart-touching story.

Disclaimer: All images from The First Ride are property of the respective production studios and are used here under Fair Use for the purpose of criticism and review.

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This article was originally written in Hungarian for Ricemegatron Expert Film Blog and subsequently translated into English for Ricemegatron Expert: Korean Screen Insights. The English version was created with the assistance of Gemini AI, focusing on preserving the original tone, structure, and critical style of the author.

The Last Ride: A Race for the Pleasure of Fulfillment

You can find the original article in Hungarian here →

(Author’s screenshot from The Last Ride.)

To understand the roots of this story, it's worth looking back

at the director's 2016 debut, 'The Last Ride' 

After watching Nam Dae-joong’s two films (The Last Ride, 2016; The First Ride, 2025), I find too many unformed thoughts suddenly swirling within me. On one hand, I think about how, although we know Koreans could be Olympians in the visceral experience of pain, they can still speak about everything in a lightened form where agony is tamed into bearable sadness. On the other hand, I reflect on how my Hungarian soul (perhaps in sync with the European one) has been socialized, even in a cultural sense, to expect tragedy to be tragedy—something to be spoken of only with solemnity, for if we do not approach it with sufficient weight, it loses its essential power. Yet here are the Koreans, wringing our insides for the umpteenth time, forcing us to burst out laughing in the moments of our deepest empathy. Naturally, we too know that tragedy and comedy are like Yin and Yang—inseparable, each carrying a small part of the other. Nevertheless, in our part of the world, we rarely succeed in producing the blend that we can masterfully experience once again in these two films.

The film's original title is "The Great Wish," which became The Last Ride in English, with all its nuances: the final journey, the last trip, the ultimate mission. Interestingly, if we consider "ride" in a more literal sense, the title latently refers to the true content of this "last round"—we are confronted with an explicit scene even before the title credits: a young man lying in a hospital bed ejaculates after a bit of fantasizing.

(Author’s screenshot from The Last Ride.)

(Author’s screenshot from The Last Ride.)

The leaven of the story is friendship, just as it will be in the other, much later film. Here, three young men are bound by this tie "from birth," a bond that seems no longer strong enough to hold "the three musketeers" together for much longer. From the offhand remarks of Gap-deok (Ahn Jae-hong) and Nam-joon (Kim Dong-young) on their way to a hospital visit, it is clear that these young men are in that stage of sexual maturation where awakening physical desires occupy them significantly. However, they are not yet adult enough to face the harsh reality of life that is about to take their friend, Go-hwan (Ryu Deok-hwan), who suffers from incurable Lou Gehrig's disease (ALS) and is approaching the end. The boys stumble through their everyday lives, often appearing silly, until they finally grasp the ungraspable. The immobile Go-hwan is surrounded by the desperate love of his parents alongside that of his friends. Slowly, everyone begins to inquire about the sick boy's wish that they could fulfill. Poor Go-hwan struggles with his unspeakable, seemingly unachievable desire, which he deems better to keep secret. Consequently, everyone tries to find the best way to immerse the departing youth in the experience of real life one last time. These actions, alongside the love and efforts of the "givers," are full of catastrophes that provoke boisterous laughter; it is a miracle our patient survives them at all. As a result of these ordeals, Go-hwan finally blurts out to his buddies what he truly desires: he cannot die stuck in a state of childhood; he longs for a real physical act to experience his manhood at least once.

(Author’s screenshot from The Last Ride.)

(Author’s screenshot from The Last Ride.)

Thus, the task falls to his friends to find a woman who can fulfill this wish. The two boys' Calvary begins, as they themselves are still minors, meaning their accessible connections in this area are limited. We get a deep look into how various people relate to their request, to them, and to their friend's illness. However, they stubbornly cross every boundary until they finally find solidary helpers among the male members of adult society. They reach their goal through genuine adventure-film trials, and in this process, we lack neither humor nor suffering.

Although it never shoves it in our faces, the film confronts us with the parental problem: how well do we really understand our own child? Do we see them as they truly are, or do we see what we want to see in them as our "eternal child," as we experience with the mother (Jeon Mi-sun)? This heightened life situation compels the father (Jeon No-min) to make a decision that, even in its comicality, contains the necessity of rising above conventional relations, as he is the one who, as a man, finally understands how he can be of service to his son.

(Author’s screenshot from The Last Ride.)

Alongside Go-hwan, his friends are also part of the process of growing up and becoming adults, in which they understand that departure is also a part of life, and they must do something as long as the last green leaf still flutters on the withered bonsai.

(Author’s screenshot from The Last Ride.)

(Author’s screenshot from The Last Ride.)

The sequences filmed in the empty hospital ward are heart-wrenching. Writer-director Nam Dae-joong ensures that we, as viewers, laugh through our tears—with pain, yet with peace in our hearts. He who was forced to depart could do so with dignity, and those who remained continue to run the marathon of their lives.

Disclaimer: All images from The Last Ride are property of the respective production studios and are used here under Fair Use for the purpose of criticism and review.


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This article was originally written in Hungarian for Ricemegatron Expert Film Blog and subsequently translated into English for Ricemegatron Expert: Korean Screen Insights. The English version was created with the assistance of Gemini AI, focusing on preserving the original tone, structure, and critical style of the author.