I watched Butterfly in one breath—and exited it with breakin
g
pieces of my heart I never knew were so tender.
From the very first scene, where David Jung steps back into the world he left behind, presumed dead, his eyes haunted, I was hooked. Daniel Dae Kim’s performance isn’t just charisma; it’s regret, remorse, love, and fear tangled in one man trying to survive a decision that cost him everything.
I'd seen the trailer, heard the hype—that Daniel Dae Kim was coming back in a spy thriller of Korean-American storytelling, full of emotional complexity. But still I wasn’t sure. We're all getting used to spy stuff. But something yanked at me when I watched the lyric, “Second chances don’t come twice,” scroll across scenes of a father’s return. And I confess—I've felt that way too. So I decided to watch.
David Jung is an ex U.S. operative leading a quiet life in Seoul, keeping his second family safe. When intelligence about his past comes to the attention of the daughter he abandoned, Rebecca, the deadly Caddis assassin tasked to kill him, clashes erupt. The first episode is all about the sparks when she tracks him down in his countryside hideout. She fires. He doesn’t budge. Rather than he takes hold. And I, like Rebecca, was conflicted.
The weight of that standoff is considerable. Here is the daughter you thought you lost caught up in a rooftop firefight. And there is the man she thought she'd lost was crying under the weight of his own innocence of his own failure. It wasn’t nothing. It was disappointing.
Later on, at Dongdaegu Station, they fight to live, and for the feeble, unwritten bond rekindled between them. They flee into turmoil, trust wobbly on each whirling choice. In a train car locked shut, the space between words screams: Will he choose family or run? That silence, shot through with gunsmoke and tears is what haunts me to this day.
Daniel Dae Kim isn’t just a spy. He’s playing a broken dad who never lost being one. His eyes are so weary, so fearful of his own power speak the tale. And Reina Hardesty as Rebecca is unforgettable. Her icy calculation in games of cat and mouse jars with fragments of broken yearning: the moment she realizes that the man she’s hunting isn’t just a spy. He's a father
Piper Perabo as Juno, David’s former ally and current nemesis, is a steel blade hiding regret. Her loyalty to Caddis, to power, is unshakeable—until you catch glimpses of guilt when she understands what she’s costing David. The tension between loyalty, power, betrayal, and reconciliation crackles between the characters, charged with what’s spoken and left unsaid.
Butterfly is an aesthetic film, with neon nights on rain-slicked light that contrasts with the evolving skyline of Seoul. There are tight action sequences, those car chases that create the sensation of being stalked by a shark, infiltration scenes that get your heart racing. However, even more spectacular are the pauses: few seconds when David looks at his new daughter playing. Once Rebecca learns that he is more than a ghost story. Those scenes--explained, unhurried--are more grave than all the explosions.
After watching Butterfly, I experienced the broken heart of my own would-be second chance. David feels that he is doing what is right, but Rebecca is only left alone. That alienation… it breaks me because it is there in all of us: the weight of the decisions that reverberate, the choices you cannot take back, and the desire to once again connect when words fail.
At one point, Rebecca looks at the younger daughter of David and her eyes are filled with tears- not with hatred but with joy. Grief. Since she is trapped in that family scene of which she might have been a part. And it brought me to a place I don’t allow myself to go to as often.
It becomes clear in the last episode, as the train is still in the dark and you are not sure what will happen to Eunju and Rebecca, Butterfly is not a closed-ended story. It’s life. Cut, unfinished, and beautiful still. It brought me to the reminder that forgiveness is not necessarily reconciliation. At times it appears like still being concerned after all the rest.
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