Korean drama series (part II)

Just wanted to write about some Korean drama series I had watched. In my previous posts I have written about Criminal Minds, Signal, Stranger, Voice, and Life.

As I have mentioned before, I would avoid those romantic dramas. I also don't like ghost stories - vampire included. I love watching thrillers and detective stories.

1. Tunnel (2017)
This series was recommended for those who loved 'Signal'. A 1986 police detective who tried to catch a serial murderer, went through a tunnel which took him to the year of 2016 - where he would again meet the murderer. This was nice to watch.

2. Missing Noir M (2015)
This one was very good. An ex-FBI went back to Korea and partnered with a local police detective to solve missing person cases. What I like about this was, the ex-FBI guy and the local detective often worked separately looking for clues; it was faster that way. The local detective was as smart as the ex-FBI guy. I hate it when police is described like they have no brain and only uses strength, when they are supposed to be detectives but acted like thugs.

3. City Hunter (2011)
Watched this because my sister often mentioned Lee Min-ho's name, like he was the most handsome and popular actor in South Korea. So I looked up his works, and among them, only City Hunter looked interesting. Well, I must say that I enjoyed watching this very much. I knew City Hunter comic books - a private detective who loved everything female, and the movie version with Jackie Chan. But this Korean drama was something else. They had created this to be a whole excellent story, that City Hunter avenged the death of his father. He hunted 5 politicians to destroy them. It seemed like 'the Count of Monte Cristo' to me, so yes, I liked this very much.

4. Innocent Defendant (2018)
I enjoyed watching this very much. Both lead actors who played the defendant and the bad guy were excellent. A prosecutor had to confess to have murdered his own wife, to save his kidnapped child. His cell mates were hilarious, especially in a musical scenes. If I had to be picky, I didn't like the actor who played Prosecutor Kang because he was bland.

5. Life On Mars (2018)
This one was also good. A forensic scientist traveled back 30 years and saw his own childhood days and why the murderer he was trying to catch in 2018 became what he was to be. This was different from Tunnel. In Tunnel the hero traveled back in time through a tunnel, but in this, the time traveling was in the hero's mind. Interesting to see how a 1988 female police officer was described in here: their main job was to serve coffee for male officer.

6. 14 Days God's Gift (2014)
This was very good. A child was kidnapped and found dead, drown in a lake. The anguished mother committed suicide by throwing herself into the same lake. She wake up and found that she was taken back to the previous 14 days before the day her little girl was found dead. So she tried to prevent the disaster to happen. Because she tampered with this and that from day 1, we would see that the next events would be different from what she had experienced before. This series was so intense and the two leads, Lee Bo-young and Cho Seung-woo, were convincing. Many had complaints about the ending - including me. I saw that an alternate ending was available, [spoiler] but any ending with the death of Cho Seung-woo's character would always be disappointing. Why couldn't they let him live? Just because a shaman had said so, they had the heart to kill him. Didn't they know that Hezekiah, King David and the people of Nineveh could change God's mind.

7. Remember (2015)
This was a so-so series. A young man with a photographic memory became a lawyer to clear his father's name. The alzheimer's father had been accused of rape and murder of a university student. I think it would be better if this had shorter episodes --> it was 20 episodes. The real murderer was the heir of a conglomerate; and with corruption in the justice system, it seemed impossible to put him in jail. The actor who played the bad guy (Nam Koong Min) was very good, and his looks was something I can't forget in a long time.

8. The K2 (2016)
I thought this would be similar to City Hunter, but I was wrong. The lead actor was good looking and the fighting scenes were very good (especially the fight in the bathroom), but the story was .... not good. Four of the main characters were overacting (this excluded the good looking lead actor) and at least two of them loved to laughed hysterically. Two presidential candidates, one was worse than the other. I even wondered whether the writer of the drama loved his motherland, that he created two bad guys as presidential candidates. It happened that our hero was a mercenary soldier whose future wife got murdered in Iraq. She was a bright independent woman who could speak many languages. Now he fell in love again with a girl who couldn't do anything - couldn't even cook instant ramen, who perhaps had a mind of a 9 year-old. It just didn't make sense to me: a war veteran exchanged sms text messages with his girlfriend. I hated this series that I hoped every character died, except the hero and the JSS security guys.

9. 38 Task Force (2016)
This one was quite good. A tax collector worked with a group of frauds to collect taxes from delinquent taxpayers. It was a bit slow at times, but quite enjoyable.

10. Heartless City (2013)
Wanted to watch this because of the reviews. It turned out that it was not so good as I had expected, although it was not bad either. It was about police undercover in drug dealer organizations. In my opinion, if we talk about TV series about undercover, Hong Kong's Line Walker is much better.

11. Return (2018)
I like the pace and tone of this series. It showed us how ugly a revenge could be, because the bad guys became the victims - I did feel sorry for two of them (the doctor and the family guy). It was hard for me to sympathize with the original victim. For me the hero was the police, who tried to catch the murderer. He looked not so bright, but actually he was quite smart. This series showed us that we should be an honest person. A wrong decision (a lie) could make us fall deep and deeper. In the end, it would be better to forgive, don't you agree?
This series reminded me of Danny Boyle's Shallow Grave, where 3 friends killed each other over a suitcase of money -- and it began because they simply wouldn't come forth to the police.

So far, I only dislike Voice and The K2. Remember and Heartless City are so-so. The best one is still Stranger.

Life (TV-2018)

Had wanted to watch this because I heard it had been made by the same writer that made 'Stranger' - and it was also starring Cho Seung-woo. The first episodes were slow and almost boring, but the last few episodes were intense. I think perhaps it's because I was not impressed by one of the two main characters. If you look at the movie poster, there are two characters: Left - Cho Seung-woo, who played the president director [in a hospital], and Right -Lee Dong-wook, who played a Emergency Room doctor.

The ER doctor, Ye Jin-woo, was the main character in this series. Everything was in motion because of him. However I must say I was not impressed with his character at all. It seemed to me Ye Jin-woo had lost his will to live. The way he said his lines was flat.

Ye Jin-woo was the good guy, while the president director, Gu Seung-hyo, was the bad guy. But my sympathy lied with the Mr. Gu. Ye Jin-woo tried to get the truth behind the death of the hospital director and refused the new changes made by the new president director - whom he thought was money oriented. He was the good guy in this series, but I disliked him for stirring things and made things difficult for Mr. Gu. The poor Mr Gu, on the other hand, tried to do his best making money for the company and made the doctors safe. He was misunderstood by many, because of the wrong start, and squeezed between the doctors and the CEO.

In the end, I enjoyed watching this drama about a big corporate. It was interesting to see how a big company in Korea worked.