This review may contain spoilers
Acting A++. Quickly resolved tropes, but Too many villains & scary violence
Really love the leads. Really love the fighting sequences. There were some tropes (the selfish mother in particular REALLY made me angry ) but things get resolved quickly. While they did a good job of balancing out the light & heavy content, it still had too much scary violence & viciousness to give it a higher rating. The sheer number of bad guys really overwhelmed the series for me, but the quality of acting by the leads was off the charts. )maybe I can figure out a way to edit this)Was this review helpful to you?
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This review may contain spoilers
Not my cup of tea
So, it goes like this - the writers intended to tell a compelling story of vengeance and a pursuit of justice, but somewhere down the line decided to turn it into a slopy semi-comedic, semi-legal dramedy.Bong Sang Pil is a lawyer who returns to his hometown to catch his mother's murderers and to purge the city from corrupt judges, cops, lawyers, businessmen. But, instead of creating a righteous lawyer, the writers create a character resembling a cheeky, hot-shot cop from an American 80s movie. Ha Jae Yi, also a lawyer, is an impulsive hoodlum and an embarrassment to the legal profession with her tendency to punch judges. But, we are supposed to like her because she is a lawyer who cares. Ahn Oh Joo is a poor man's version of Tony Soprano. Judge Cha Moon Sook is the only compelling villain, but the writers make no effort to explain why she is so powerful and why everyone, especially the city's top gangster, always grovel at her feet.
After Bong Sang Pil and Ha Jae Yi team up to work together, the plot focuses on the murder trial of a corrupt cop and does not move forward. In episode 6, the main couple sleeps together. Then, the writers think it's appropriate to devote half an episode of them playing on the beach. The drama has no soul, purpose, or direction with a lot of things happening on a whim. I am a Lee Joon Gi fan but watching this show was a struggle. I braved through 6 episodes and now I am done.
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Lawless Lawyer is definitely enjoyable and it is my first time totally liking Lee Joon Gi.
Other than it is of a good quality, I really loved how sometimes they showed us some scenes from afar, without sounds, only actions. It said so much.
The story is quite good as well. Plus, I really love the main characters and their names for some reason. They were catchy.
Something else that i like about this drama is that the ‘childhood connection thing is not done in a cliche manner like many dramas do.
The action is a bonus.
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At first I didn’t know that I will love this series so much - I just want to watch another series while waiting for new episodes of Come Here and Hug Me, Wok of Love and Suits...
But after just watching the first episode I am already so in to this series!!!
Acting/Actors: superb! Oh I am so in love with Lee Joon Gi and Soe Ye Ji! They look so wonderful together. The camaraderie between all actors are great! There are slight bromance that always gets to me! Chemistry is simply amazing!
Story: gosh! From the back story to their present lives I’m quite hooked! This series has everything, drama comedy romance family skinship killings and a really fantastic ACTION scenes!!! Phasing for me is quite right, it’s fast and slow at the same time so I just about like it...
Music: just about right for me, they are not banking too much with music unlike other dramas that automatically plays music almost every other scene, I guess because there are already a lot of things happening at the same time so there’s really no need to put too much music just to make the viewers kind of feel like intense or something.... The story and their acting will already make you nuts with intense! Lol!!!
I hope you guys give this a chance :)
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action pact drama not romance
ChatGPT recommended this when I asked for romance and deep love and some action, which is what confused me because I was waiting for the love part and once we got there finally it felt like an afterthought.I think I came here with the wrong expectations, as my rating is low, as it reflects my frustration with the lack of plot development with the two love interests.
Otherwise, this drama was engaging, fun, and full of twists. You never know what's going to happen or who's going to stab whom in the back. I had a hard time because they humanized the villains a bit too much for me to fully hate them but I think that's how it should be. So I'll give it a pass on that.
The resolution was well done, villains mostly got what they deserved and I just really enjoyed it overall and it left a smile in my face. The OST was fun and the fashion and cars were immaculate.
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Loved the story. Every episode had a twist. In every episode I thought that Bong Sang Pil plan would flop, but there are always some tricks under his sleeve. Loved how Bong Sang Pil revealed the villain's evil deeds. The way he turned the table in his favor was so pleasing to watch.
Loved Bong Sang Pil & Seo Yea Ji bickering. Lee Joon Gi & Ha Jae Yi have great chemistry. Nothing more to say about their acting, they're brilliant at what they do.
Both the leads, Lee Joon Gi & Ha Jae Yi, played characters who can’t express their emotions & here they’re full of emotions.
Laughed at the Seok Gwan Dong reaction when Bong Sang Pil said he didn’t care if he donated Seo Yea Ji organs.
Loved the chaos that Bong Sang Pil team caused in the courtroom, which doesn’t happen in real life for sure.
Laughe when Seo Yea Ji pushed Bong Sang Pil face into the food & their team followed him.
Bong Sang Pil using some illegal or tacit in his favor.
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Underrated Action-Legal K-Drama
LAWLESS LAWYER was a fun, fast-paced, slick legal drama starring the amazing Lee Joon Gi (of Flower of Evil/ Scarlet Heart Reo fame). In this series, he is a cunning gangster lawyer, name Bong Sang-pil, out for justice for crimes committed against his mother during his childhood. Being a real life martial arts expert Lee Joon Gi shines in this often action-packed role. I personally really enjoyed the energy of this show, as the action and fight scenes really spiced up what might have become a slow or tedious legal drama.Actress Seo Ye-ji was also interesting as the courageous moral lawyer Ha Jae-yi, who is paired with Bong Sang-pil. His cheery charisma mixed with her unwavering boldness made for a very entertaining pairing, as the two become partners in Lawless Law Firm and eventually grow to deeper levels of understanding.
Ha Jae-yi was a very likable character for me, a strong female lead from the start—fighting discrimination in the legal systems where female lawyers aren’t given the same respect. Instead of being a push over, her reactions are sometimes less thought out but certainly relatable. She was one of those characters who reacted reasonably and felt relatable. When she did—say—punch someone in the face…it felt justified. Otherwise, she had a lot of character depth and made for a great balance to the character of Bong Sang-pil.
While there were some predictable aspects of this series, the cast was really colorful and high energy, which is what honestly sold me on the show. Episode 2 drew me in and by episode 4 I was hooked…
The "villains" or baddies are believably bad, rather than 2D cutout bad guys. I do wish there had been more motives given, however, as to what drove them to do what they did. Money, fame, power, greed. Either way, they were very vividly characterized, especially the gangster thug/Mayor Ahn Oh-Joo. He was brilliantly casted/acted and was hugely entertaining to watch on screen. Judge Cha Moon Sook was convincingly devious in her role as well, and very hard to read. She was very subtle and cunning and made for a threatening foe. Nam Soon-Ja was another interesting character, brilliantly acted. The way she flipped personalities made her another unpredictable variant among the many puzzle pieces. Overall the casting was great. There are just too many great actors and roles to name. And that’s what made this show so watchable for me.
While some plot points are indeed a bit predictable, the series was very entertaining and well casted. It was quirky and had a lot of heart. It was a very fun watch and being a moderate Lee Joon Gi fan, I wanted to catch up on some of his lesser known series. This one was very enjoyable and exciting, though the show was missing something, hard to say what (no fault of the cast).
Besides his usual charismatic charms, Lee Joon Gi offered some really powerful emotional performances in this series as well. Some of those scenes packed a hard punch. As far as the romance, the main leads had great onscreen chemistry that felt natural and convincing. It was great to watch their relationship progress. It made for a fun, memorable experience and overall, it was a very decent and exciting show. Very underrated and worth a chance. No regrets.
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Sometimes you need lawless people to deal with stuffs
LIKEThe loyal Gwan Dong towards Oh Joo
Loved the cases Sang Pil took on and how Dae Woong was there for him
DISLIKE
Moon Sook's character and how Oh Joo was supporting her
MUSIC - personal fav
Burn It Up - Iamnot
Memories - Babylon
When Our Eyes Met - Kim Yeon Ji
REWATCH VALUE
Probably will re-watch someday
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This review may contain spoilers
started out well but then....
This is my second Lee Joon Gi drama, and I am so disappointed :(. I liked the main leads and their acting a lot, and I kind of want to see LJG in an unserious/unhinged funny role again because he did well here but some of the other acting performances were not convincing me at all. Choi Min Soo was one of the actors I could not stand in the show. Regardless of his character's ending (which I did not like because I felt like it was lazy writing), his acting made the character even more unbearable. He was overacting and simply gave a bad performance in my opinion. The tongue flicking was nasty, his hair and make-up made him look like a clown and his gangster behavior felt like a joke. He looked more like a cartoony stereotype than a true gangster.I also found it ridiculous how everyone was head over heels over Cha Moon Sook, like....?? Everyone was just following and praising her like a dog, it was cult-like. It was ludicrous how everyone fell to their knees to apologize whenever they breathed wrong like she really had some serious power over these men and women, but I couldn't take it seriously because I found it too much. At times, the show felt like a play rather than a TV series because it felt too over the top.
Some things also just didn't make any sense. Like Song Pil's (SP) gang actually believing that he killed his uncle. I don't care that they ended up being corrupted by Miss Cha, it still felt so dumb that these men, who watched Sang Pil grow up, actually thought he killed his uncle. That entire plot felt dumb to me but okay. Also, Jae Yi's mom telling SP to break up with her and blabla like?? Girl, your daughter is not working with the man because she's in love, she's trying to get Cha Moon Sook locked up for being responsible for your supposed death.... be fucking for real, that annoyed me too.
I ended up watching the show in 1.5x speed to get it over with, but I have a feeling this is one of the not so good law shows because this felt all over the place. It was okay but also quite disappointing....
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Tried watching it for LJG
I really wanted to continue watching it. Maybe I can pick it up later again, and writing a review for a show I did not finish may not be appropriate, but let me just say I want to watch this for LJG, but him acting all cool makes it look uncool. I think the character role does not suit him at all and it is very hard to watch this coming from Flower of Evil.Also, I am not a super fan of law drama (I prefer sageuk) so yeah I already have my biases even before I started. This is the least hooking first episode I have ever watched.
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