The Last Man the Movie: First Love

Clever action, standard plot, fun, with a couple weaknesses.

As far as action goes, the action scenes in this are great and particularly clever with the use of spacial awareness in my opinion. Action may not be my main genre of viewing but I very much enjoyed all the action scenes here. The connections between the characters were nicely done and I am very much a fan of the main lead.

Visually the film was also strong, with pleasant cinematography and levels of detail, and good use of visual effects where relevant.

The other major strength is that this film can easily be watched without previous engagement in the Last Man series, as I had no idea there were previous entries. There is a very brief summation of things that sets the ground perfectly for those who know nothing, and could act as a refresher to those familiar with the previous film(s).

While having Rowoon around was fun and his performance was fine, he was not a plausible American agent (linguistically), neither were most of those playing American agents (linguistically). Why? Because while they had foreigners playing the foreign roles, they didn’t pay much attention to their English proficiency. Rowoon in particular was an odd choice because he has a heavy Korean accent when speaking Japanese, and that’s coming from a non-native speaker of Japanese. His English was also reasonable but not great, so him being an American agent that speaks Japanese was an odd choice.

The other nitpick I would have is the strange portrayal of blindness. While I have not seen other entries in the series, the implication is that Minami Hiromi has complete blindness, which is actually very rare and the actor’s eyes are not necessarily consistent with this. Otherwise, things to do with his blindness largely add up and I know this is a nitpick, but most blind people have *some* vision, just in extremely varied iterations. This however is not a main theme of the film, but I do appreciate good disability representation in dramas and films, hence this commentary.

Other than the questionable optics language wise, the entire film was an enjoyable blend of fun, action, human characters, and plot. If it looks interesting to you, absolutely give it a watch!

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