AleksandraSucur

Yes, it was cool, that's the right word.

Yes, two angsty dramas are a bit too much... especially if you're in a ski resort, coping with sharp slopes like you, lol.
I think I'll finish VoA later in the evening; honestly, despite ST is more nerve wrecking, it's way more interesting and better written story imo, so I prefer it to VoA.
As for the story... it's a docufiction, based on real accounts of both the real events and real figures. HX is Ho Yin, have no idea if the characters in his name are differently pronounced in Cantonese and Mandarin, but it's basically his bio, combined with those of Ma Qi, and Ke siblings, who are also real historical figures. I've checked also Portuguese and Japanese people who held those offices in real history, the names are changed but maintained their initials. Sawa character could be a combination of two Japanese officials, one holding the office of chief military police (and having the same name) and the other an agent working under him who was previously imprisoned by British in HK. I found no records on Qiao siblings, Mary, Mr Rodrigues, Pak Lok and Huang gangster, so I suppose they are fictional, created on the general accounts of the time (eg. Japanese really recruited gangsters all over the Guangdong area, it was a strategy to work with members of triads to create a sense of illegality and insecurity as a way to step in as a force which will ensure order in a "messy lawless China"). I've also found records of the events, they were slightly modified in order to engage the characters present in the story, like the comandeering of Sun Qi cherosene cargo ship, which indeed happened but it was conducted by the Japanese navy. Guerrilla East River communists were also real. The story is a great testimony of the time although it simplified and fictionalized real events and real people in order to convey general atmosphere and struggles in a comprehensible way for general public. A pure documentary would be boring for general public after all.

7 reasons why you should not miss this drama
https://kisskh.at/profile/11598319/review/523090

Oh, thank you very much for this info.
The review is here https://kisskh.at/profile/11598319/review/523090

Oh, I've finished it today and I intend to write the review after dinner.
I see on MDL only the screenwriter, not the original author. Could you tell me his/her name?

Thank to you too!
If I haven't seen your positive comment last week, I wouldn't even look into this gem.
Thank you again, merry X-mas! 🫶

Thank you very much for these insights, which furtherly confirmed my own (very good) impressions on this drama and reflections when compared (as Frost edelweiss suggested) with WoF, which is highly rated on MDL. Somewhat undeservedly, imo, despite its good start and cast.
I am a bit sad ST haven't reached much of the international audiences, because the story is a gem. I've spent the whole night yesterday (good way to pass X-mas eve, lol) reasearching the wwii history of Macau and I am still completely amazed after I found out that the majority of characters in this drama either really existed or are inspired (with slightly different names) by real persons, with many events that really happened (like the Japanese comandeering of a cargo ship), although the author changed certain things for the purposes of this story. The story which is amazingly consistent from the first to the last episode, perfectly delivered by the cast. Such a rarity nowadays...
And yes, I agree RJL's microexpressions as HX were perfect.👍

I feel the same... Merry X-mas, btw 🫶

I was also very sorry they didn't have anything concrete. Such a chemistry!
Who cares about the jerk traitor husband, you'll see later, that husband made her killed

Thousand years after, we watch STOTD impatiently awaiting for the next season...
I wonder if the ending scene is hinting the next season will deal with the emperor's weird taste in women 🫤🤦‍♀️

One cannot but question emperor's taste in women... The last one he liked was fat and destroyed the empire...

The entire plot is driven by that insanely restless and brazen Sawa-psycho. If this character was able to accept a defeat, we wouldn't enjoy this drama bc there would be no drama at all, lol.
The production cast an incredible actor for this role, able to portray vast traits of this character - malice, hypocrisy, competitiveness, with visceral need to feel the power, to dominate others and enjoy in other people's pain, endowed with a quick, scheming, twisted mind and sheer brazenness to the point of being ready to commit any kind of crime - taking his colonel Sawa step by step towards insanity and grotesque.
Compliments to the person who created such a character, which is the exact, specular, opposite to HX's calm character making the latter look even cooler and smarter than he actually is. And ofc, compliments to the actor who embodied this villain with such a convincing, piercing energy

Hi, dear Frost_edelweiss, so glad to see you're watching this one, too, (and looking forward for your illuminating researches/findings about the historical authenticity of the events).
Now, just to open a debate... I think, this drama is overally better than WoF. Although WoF had several top quality advantages:
- first-tier actors, combined with
- memorable complex dialogues/monologues, especially those between the two MLs, incredibly well-written and founded on events and (several) characters that really existed in history of Shanghai (evidently well reasearched by the screenwriter-director),
- HQ production (=high amount of money invested in cinematography, props, costumes etc.) which added a lot to its highly educational value...
... all these certainly good reasons for Magnolia (not Golden Rooster) awards nominations.
But it also contained certain unforgivable flaws which ST doesn't have.
1. Ren Jia Lun may not be as good as Wang Yang or Wang Yibo in line delivery of complex long speeches which also require a series of complex microexpressions revealing subtle meanings, but he delievered very well the character he played: a thoughtful, committed, good professional person, disinclined to antagonize anyone or anything. And the rest of the actors mostly did the the same: they've all performed well enough to make their characters believeable.
2. In particular, the villains in ST are more believeable, beside the excellent Haogo's acting, we hear Japanese characters speaking fluent Japanese, the undecisive Portuguese speaking Portuguese, the British speaking British English (despite some problems in dubbing the actor who played the husband of the British lady, but he is a marginal character, so it's a negligible flaw). Foreign languages in WoF were offensive for the ears, not only the German spoken by the Chinese characters was unlistenable, but it wasn't good enough when spoken by (supposedly) German characters. Speaking of which, I remember that the arm merchant was a German Jew, so a totally impossible thing bc of the racial laws already existing for some years in Nazist Germany at the time a and have no idea how the scriptwriter could have done such a faux pas. And there was a problem with the arms he was selling, too, they were developed later on...
3. I don't expect ST will have that tangible drop in value we felt when the WoF passed to the Communist setting. I'm currently at ep 22, so I can't be sure, but the ST's storyline tends to smooth out the (historically) existing sharp antagonisms among the factions and that's what we (the audiences today) actually like. We all like peace and dislike ideological clashes which marked the history. We want to believe a place like ST's Macau, in which all the resistance forces converged despite their internal divisions and flaws, really existed for the "greater good".
I haven't researched the history of Macau of this period, but I like a lot how it is presented in ST: the whole town became a character.

I agree with you, the role in Eternal Brotherhood suited him the best. In EB he also had the best chemistry with all other characters (except the FL, lol)

Oh, I've seen it in dozens of movies. As a Wong Kar-wai's fan, I've seen it In The Mood for Love and 2046, two James Bond's movies were also filmed there and ofc., I've seen Macau in iconic Bruce Lee's Fist of Fury and Dragon, as a kid I've watched and rewatched Bruce Lee's movies hundreds of times 🫶🫶🫶 and in a way, for me, China is that Cantonese speaking China, because the visuals of that specific area were my "first contact" with (and affection for) China.
What I've meant: "I've never seen Macau as a setting in a historical drama". And I certainly can't miss it

highly probable, yup. We'll see if they gonna deepen the motive later, the story already switched to the next case.
It was the twist they were targeting the emperor that was unexpected to me.

I love so much that setting in Macau. The first time I see it in a drama.

Indeed, the cases can be seen as self-standing stories. Maybe that's why my brain associates them with spectacular performances of the Chinese State Circus and the bgm used for different performances. While TVoA... maybe because it's so packed with "metal" reminds me of westerns with a bit of distopian genre and the music used in that kind of movies. Ennio Morricone (sad scenes) + Metallica (violent scenes, Master of Puppets, Fade To Black, Nothing Else Matters...) 😂

I feared it was just me, bc. I am watching two other dramas in this period, one particularly fast paced and higly engaging (Silent Tides) which pumps incredible level of cortisol in my blood and the other less gripping (The Vendetta of An) but packed with bloody twists and killings, maintaining that high level of stress... so it's natural I find this one distensive while still mind-engaging: I think this feeling comes from a gratifying sense of recollection, of reconnection with cases/stories in previous seasons and I love to immerse in its world.

Yinwan's self-righteous personality gets on my nerves... And the English lady is also irritating in her own way (good acting by both actresses btw).

The story is packed with fast paced events, actions... the tension is constantly so high (and stressful) that I forget to breath and the actors are convincing... and with such a convincing villains, do we need good guys (/girls) to be that irritating?

This drama should not be binge-watched, the audiences need some time between the eps to lower the level of cortisol in their blood