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Inventive South Korean filmmakers like Bong Joon-ho (The Host, Memories of Murder) and Jang Joon-hwan (Save the Green Planet!) are noted for their disregard for conventional genre boundaries, while director Yun Je-gyun seems determined to bend genre to the point of breaking. Previously, there was the gross-out teen sex comedy/harrowing botched abortion drama Sex is Zero, and now we have the crude but lovable, fish-out-of-water family comedy/brutal gangster saga/ritual suicide melodrama Miracle on First Street. Certainly, high-level melodrama is nothing new to Korean cinema, but Yun takes it to such an off-putting extreme that, while his film has been successful at home, Western audiences will find it more jarring and upsetting than entertaining. It's a shame, because the film's carefree first half of First Street demonstrates that Yun has seriously improved his comic chops since Sex is Zero. Aided by strong performances, particularly by gruffly amusing Im Chang-jung (Pil-je) and the ever-charming Ha Ji-won (Myeongnan), Yun draws us into the dilapidated little world of First Street, and makes us appreciate the neighborhood's illusive charms, just as Pil-je does, beginning with a very funny standoff in the road with two children whose relationship with the gangster form the heart of the film. There's a romantic subplot involving an ambitious poor woman and a vending machine operator that retains its easy charm, but Pil-je's story and that of Myeongnan's disastrous boxing legacy veer so far into miserabilism that it strains credulity and destroys whatever good will the film has built up. If First Street was a realistically gritty depiction of slum life, its hellishness might be acceptable, but it's such a lightweight and silly concoction at its start that it seems unfair and dishonest of Yun to withhold the eponymous miracle that his characters need and his audience wants.