Thursday, May 2, 2019

Korean drama series (part IV)

Duel
First episode failed to impress me because it started abruptly - the main character's sick daughter had been kidnapped. However, it was getting better as the story progressed. In the end I think it was quite good. I don't like the female prosecutor: she was more like a psychopath with her smiles and big eyes. The main character also swore too much; this is something because I don't speak Korean. The plot itself was interesting, about stem cell vaccine and human clones, and a greedy millionaire who wanted to live forever. What I like about this series is that there was this young killer and I understood the reason why he did those killings. I think the audience would end up sympathize with him.

Time Between Dog and Wolf
I watched this because of Lee Joon-ki, but the main three young actors were all good. It was about NIS vs organized crime from Thailand. First episode was lame and the actress who played the mother was clumsy, but episode two onward were very good. I like the pacing: there was no boring moments, even when the main character lost his memory, it didn't slow down. 

The Slingshot
First episode was promising. I liked the idea of the story: A young businessman (later we found out that his name was Chae Do-woo) needed money to take over his father's construction company, to built his dream city. He by chance chose a dumpling company to mess with. A small dumpling factory was also affected, went bankrupt and the owner committed suicide. The owner's brother, Kim Shin, found out the source of his misery, so the two (Kim and Chae) became arch enemies. The problem with this series was, I sympathized with the bad guy (Chae) who was mentally sick and alone. The good guys, together with Chae's father and sister, and later Chae's wife, were all against him. Kim Shin was unemployed, and along with his American lawyer friend, these two lived off another friend. The pace was slow but I liked the ending. Spoiler: Chae Do-woo pretended he was really mentally ill so he wouldn't be send to jail.

Hero
This was tagged as comedy, action; so I was hoping for something light and entertaining. First episodes were indeed funny, but as the story went it turned out that it got serious theme. It reminded me of Falsify/Distorted - but in a lighter tone (Hero was made 8 years earlier): small newspaper vs big media company. The big media company's chairman (Choi) became a candidate for presidential election, but a small newspaper reported that he had committed atrocious crimes. 
A mistake that I spotted: Choi had assigned his subordinates to do dirty jobs and the police found proofs of the crimes, including a kidnapping and a murder; but they didn't arrest the kidnapper and the murderer, but went straight to arrest Choi (it was when he was arrested for the first time).

Ghost (a.k.a. Phantom)
Oh this one was very good. It's about a cyber investigation unit and the cases started out with the death of an actress. A famous hacker took his dead police friend's identity to make things right. The enemy, by chance, was played by the same actor who played the enemy in Hero.

The Devil
The idea of the story was actually good, but I don't believe psychometry so this was a wrong choice for me to watch. Kang Oh-so, now a detective police, 12 years ago accidentally murdered his school mate but declared innocent after putting the blame on the victim. In the same year, the victim's mother and brother died in a car accidents. Now it looked like the victim's brother had arisen from the grave and started to seek revenge. Those related to the murder died one by one after receiving a tarot card.
This series was slow and the actor who played the lawyer was not impressing. The police also depended on supernatural power too much, rather than do real detective works.

Joseon Gunman 
It's conservative vs enlightenment political factions in King Gojong era. The king at first supported enlightenment, but after the first rebellion, he only focused on how to maintain his power. At that time, China and Japan had opened the ports to foreign influence, but Korea hadn't followed their suit. Li Jun-ki played the main role and I always love to see him in action scenes. This role reminded me of his role in Iljimae, because here he played a Japanese businessman by day and a gunman at night. Some of the romantic scenes felt slow, though, and there was a stupid scene where he fled with his girlfriend into the woods - where she lost her shoe - although it was unnecessary to take her along. It was him only whom they wanted.

Mister Sunshine
The cinematography was breathtaking, but I hoped the pace could be faster. Actually this reminds me of old Italian movies. Coincidentally, this series continues where Joseon Gunman left off. Queen Min had been died and the King was powerless against Japanese occupation. The central character was a noble lady, Ae-sin, a gunman from Righteous Army - and the three men who loved her: a Korean-American, a Korean Japanese, and a rich Korean. I didn't know that Korean patriotic movie could be enjoyable.

Live
This series about police procedural was quite depressing to watch. It focused on a team of patrol division. To become a policeman was a way of living, to earn money, but the risk was higher. It makes me appreciate police officers now.

Mad Dog
I like this a lot. There was a great scene portraying a plane crash. This was about insurance scams. The main case was how an aviation company, a insurance company, a chief police, and Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs involved in a plane crash accident with 190 victims - and put the blame on the co-pilot. It's rather unbelievable, though, how the bad guys could hide the result from the blackbox - because in Indonesia, public transport accident cases would be handled by a nonstructural committee (KNKT).

Bad Guys
A detective police formed a team consisted of 3 prisoners: a mob boss, a professional killer and a serial killer, to solve cases. If those 3 could solve the cases, they would get remission. I don't really like this one. This was dark and gloomy and I don't like the way the story was told. It was rather confusing from one scene from another. Also the actor who played the serial killer had wooden expression with empty stares.