Raph5418

A crying shame...

I wanted to like this, really. A historical revenge-romance drama with a strong and sharp warrior female lead and a traumatized warrior male lead who lost all his loved generals older brothers and father in one battle, played on top of that by Ding Yu Xi, one of the best actors of his generation? It looked fire. The trailer was promising too, beautiful cinematography and Ding Yu Xi's despairing eyes as effective as ever.

But right from the beginning, the drama was disappointing. Its very first scene was utterly ridiculous, not poetic as they seem to have intended it, I still feel second-hand embarrassment just thinking about it. The drama's pace was kinda slow and the plot boring. The female lead was one of the most annoying and unbearable character I've ever seen and it doesn’t improve later. Some of her reactions also didn’t make much sence. At some point, I couldn’t stand her so much that I had to fast-forward everytime she was on screen, before finally ending up dropping the drama. The actress' acting also didn’t really resonate with me, it was pretty bland, I couldn’t feel anything.

The leads don’t have much chemistry either. They seemed akward together and it has no relation with the age gap (not big either, only 8y). It's not the first time in a drama (The Long Ballad, The Double for example) and the male lead is supposed to be younger than the female lead, so I don’t really get the criticism about that (and calling her old seriously? At 37 or 38 yo?). Lack of romance is also not an issue in itself for me, there are a lot of good dramas with well fleshed characters and an interesting plot where romance takes the backseat. This one is not it.

Ding Yu Xi shines as ever, even if its not his best role, and carries the all drama on his shoulders, but even he can’t save by itself such a disaster, especially since, to make things worse, he doesn’t have much screen time, which is strange for a male lead. His brothers and father and their bond were interesting too but they barely made an appearance in the drama. Their wives were okayish. The actresses did a good job but their characters, stories and the relationship between them and with the main leads were not really riveting when there were so much that could have been explored. Or maybe it was, later in the drama, but I couldn’t care less.

So much potential wasted....

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