Known in Korea as Dambo (Collateral), Pawn takes a premise that sounds like a dark crime thriller—two loan sharks snatch a nine-year-old girl as collateral from her undocumented mother—and spins it into a shameless, big-hearted family crowd-pleaser. If you have ever seen a Korean tearjerker like Miracle in Cell No. 7, you already know the exact playbook here. It is designed in a lab to make you laugh for an hour and then go through half a box of tissues in the final thirty minutes.

It works almost entirely because of the cast. Child actress Park So-yi is absurdly charming without being annoying, and veteran actors Sung Dong-il and Kim Hee-won have effortless grumpy-uncle chemistry. The movie gets a little silly in the back half when it piles on extreme melodrama twists to keep the characters apart, and the early threat of child trafficking is dark enough that this is a tween-and-up watch. If your household likes international movies and wants a cozy, emotional story about chosen family, it is a very easy night on the couch.