Brogana Sunfrog

Disappointment. More violent/scary stuff than romance+Villain has excess screen time

It's 30 min format just feels a bit weird & it would have been better to have cut it down to 35 episodes . There is more violence & scary stuff than romance. The end reveal ,(about the bad guy ),is brilliant & unexpected BUT this just doesn't feel like a very balanced series.
Ji Chang Wook is incredible with his many nuances. Choi Tae Joon shines, while Nam Ji Hyun does well but her character is written poorly. Kwon Na Ra is irritating & Kim Ye Won's character should have been written out by the 10th episode at the very least. Dong Ha's character is the stuff of nightmares & is in WAY too many episodes, which is my main problem with this series. Negatives out weigh the positives for me. Breaking up & making up trope should be done away with ! Neutralizing the bad guy & then bringing him back again & again & again is just tedious & traumatizing ! Side characters that don't take No for an answer should be done away with as well. I wanted to like this & Ji Chang Wook is So good in this, but there just isn't much that's satisfying beyond his acting. There is a happy ending for the leads & the 2nd leads but the satisfaction is ruined by adding 2 more un necessary episodes AFTER the happy ending which is just lazy writing. I loved Healer but with this series, I had to take breaks every few episodes because it got so dark & violent . How many people have to get stabbed!!??? Pretty disappointed in this

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Light & Fluffy over doses on the "sweet" but fun reality escapism

Pleasant Mindless, very low on drama is a lovely reality distraction . It's fun to watch male lead act cold . Female lead was a bit too childish & over the top cutesy. The parental drama is cringy. The end is happy & there is implied 2 year time skip that you never actually see as they skip right to inexplicably being together happy ending
that doesn't really fill in a whole lot of plot holes .
The time skip & career pursuit at the end felt forced.
I could not find a version online that had consistent sound so be prepared for soundless parts in each episode & also when the characters text it's not subtitled.

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intense ethnic barriers & commonalities is not for the faint hearted

D.O. is incredible & the whole movies is Brilliantly done; great dancing, well acted, But no happy ending. The fault is not in the movie, but in that it was not a movie for me. I am the wrong audience for this very serious story . The trauma that the characters faced will haunt me & perhaps it is meant to be that way, but I am unable to be pragmatic about such things. I would have passed on this important but searing raw portrayal of ethnic barriers & commonalities. I can only imagine how meaningful this is to Koreans, for whom this is recent past for . While I loved the dancing & grew fond of the characters, the intensity of the drama was too much for me....if I had known I would not have watched it because once seen, such things can not be forgotten.(will give me nightmares)

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Similar to the American series: Leverage

This is 16 episodes, not 32
I was unsure if I would like this because it has no romance but Jang Keun-Suk smirks & side glances with a twinkle in his eye as he romances the camera, so fans will still get thier fill of his charms without having to share him with an onscreen love. this is very much like the series Leverage, (there are times when the soundtrack sounds similar to that of the American Leverage theme song!) This is much more enjoyable than the Korean leverage series (which was very forgettable.) Their are some intense scenes of violence & car accidents that people ridiculously recover from. The series does an impressive job of switching the two look alikes; keeping us guessing which is which at key points.

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rollicking bromance is violent & creepy but still engaging

intense, interesting & much more fun than I anticipated. Mostly a rollicking bromance with alot of friends fighting friends without the intent to kill. I gave it a lower rating because there was alot violence and scary/creepy evil. I was glad to see alot more of Rang & for him to have a romance WITH a happy ending. Female mountain god was a bit brainlessly fixated and shallow, but then again pretty much every woman in this was just a pawn, scenery or both. this is all about the guys having fun
tussling each other & kicking bad guy butts. main characters all end up alive . Very strong Korean ethnocentricity theme, which given the era it's set in & thier history with Japan-totally appropriate & warranted fitting the story. Very engaging, well acted drama-just too violent & creepy at times for me to make it something I'd put on my shelf to rewatch. Kudos, by the way for making it only 12 episodes. 16 would have been draggy .

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Not light hearted. Has a good bit of melodrama

(has same actress as my girlfriend is a 9 tailed fox, which is why I watched it)
Though Shin Min-a steals every scene she is in. This is not a light hearted film, but a drama where Shin Min-a does a good bit of agonizing , waiting & crying. Having said
that, it's Still, very enjoyable. It's hard to grasp why Seun-beom Ryu is so insecure about his looks (scar is not disfiguring) & so the premise is kind of ridiculous. I was not impressed with his selfishness in his self sacrificing. Has a happy ending

Spoiler

but incongruously, he has both his eyebrow and his scar back at the end

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story of deceit, manipulation & revenge

This would have been better if they had made it longer than 1 hour 28 minutes because they don't take enough time to show WHY the guy is such a "catch" (OK he's rich & supports stray dogs, but still; he's a womanizer fixated on a model, though neither one of them is faithful to each other). Nor do they really develop the romance .Listed as a :Comedy /Romance, it is really neither but rather a story of deceit, manipulation & revenge. The story begins & proceeds with a seemingly generic Cinderella story until it gets to a point where you see that Cinderella is not who you & the other characters think she is. Then it becomes heartbreaking. The story twist may be difficult for some viewers to accept because family & loyalty to family at the cost of one's own interests & happiness is what drives the main character.There IS a happy ending but the end kiss scene is a mess as the guy initially misses her mouth but then proceeds to devour her, ( not in a sizzling first kiss way but rather in an unromantic " will suck you into my vortex & inhale your soul way") . Still, the movie is not a bad waste of time, it just could have been better.

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Graphic violence & overall solemn tone

this is reminiscent of the Movie "Dave" but alot less lighthearted. This Dramatic slice of court life intrigue has scenes of killings that are too graphic for me. beware of "happy" ending

Spoiler

male lead seems dead , the queen, steps away from the throne , grieves for over 2 years!!! Then he just suddenly shows up ( he’s been in a coma) and they have this cheesy long emotional moment. heartbreakingly, 2 main supporting male characters die & stay dead. it pretty much had to happen so that there were really 4 people left at the end who actually knew who the "clown" /king" really was. Too solemn for me to enjoy

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high action .rehashed scenes. Slight romance . More crying than warm fuzzies

This was 9 years old when I watched it, but I didn't feel like it was dated at all. Rain really impresses with his stunts & the way he rapidly switches from being goofy one minute to bad ass & then unexpectedly smoldering & then back to goofy. This high action series had SO much running, hand to hand fighting, people getting beat up, taking hits to the head & getting stabbed multiple times & still surviving. But the action sequences were too often too close up to really appreciate or it was in the dark . They went on much longer than was interesting. It would have been more satisfying if they had edited it to 16 episodes. The idiot Private eye from the other country was too stupid for this story & just makes you want to fast forward. Another negative was that things reoccurred too often. How many times does a person have to say :"I never want to see you again" to the same person ? To get caught once by the bad guys & get beat up is bad, but then to let yourself get caught, invite them to catch & then also walk onto their turf is just stupid. The happy ending is a little bland. Rewatch ? yeah but only for Rain & Henney. The romance is slight & there's more crying than heart moments.

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compelling, but heroes act just like the villains & drama loses steam

A well acted decent crime drama with some fun moments of romantic flirtation but overall it's a gritty, dark, sober with a mountain of political intrigue. I dropped it after 4 episodes, but then needed something in the back ground, so I watched another episode,( thinking that I wasn't invested, so it wouldn't keep me up.) Joke's on me ! I kept just watching an episode every so often & found that though it wasn't the kind of drama I normally like, the cast & the camaraderie of the cops , with thier tenacity for justice somehow drew me in.
Final thoughts :
Kang Do Chang's sister was so miserable, rude & selfish that I could not muster up any sympathy for her. Near the end, she did "evolve", but by then, I disliked her so much it was hard to accept the change as genuine.
The drama lost it's steam around episode 13 and from then on
I was sad to see that the 3 main characters compromised thier morals & took justice into thier own hands. I'm not saying that the bad guy didn't deserve his punishment, but in the fake world, I want heroes to get it right by not taking the same sort of actions that the villains do. So, ironically, all three ended up tainted by the desire for vengeance & so were not actually "Good". This ruined the series for me.

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