luckz

All the plot / movie discussion is @ https://kisskh.at/24222-drug-war , here it's just about the ending and scene changes.

The factory explosion seemingly was without his knowledge though, set up by Lee's son to "become Mr. Lee".

In the extended cut, you see. It's also discussed and more or less linked in the discussion for the extended cut.

Only one shot was fired though.
But yes, the way he walked out I wondered if he walked out after being shot.

If "Timmy" wants to only save his own skin, like the execution scene implies, why does he start the whole shootout? He could just continue helping the police and get off with a reduced sentence.

If "Timmy" cared for his family members, why does he sacrifice them and kill one himself?

If "Timmy" wanted to flee and live in hiding on the run from police, the time he's at the mute-run factory of his is the best moment. He has the whole tunnel to escape through thing and his loyal guys would have a shoot-out with the police as his distraction.

--

Why his first factory explodes with his wife dying, and he drives around drugged, is never touched upon.

Also, if "Timmy" himself was an addict, seeing how he starts the film on drugs, why is he so composed and never in need of drugs all movie long?

Sun Hong Lei switching roles, so to speak, is good. The highlight of the movie.

Towards the end it gets painfully dumb. Stuff from the initial premise is also never explained.

I've seen a few Korean productions where gangsters randomly kill policemen (maybe Bad Guys?), and a different bunch where policemen know that gangsters usually won't touch them [since attacking the police is harshly punished]. YMMV.

Surely "we should avoid bloodshed" is a model cop kind of view, while "just let them kill each other" is more something you expect the cynical jaded mad dog cop to say.

Story clarity was kinda murky, and with that I mean "who did what & why".
A lot of the, uh, extreme decisions made by characters are not based on reasons the filmmakers communicate in any way.

Again, I wish I could view the theatrical cut to see if that's any better.

The Chaser https://kisskh.at/1538-the-chaser made much more sense, with its pedestrianly simple plot.


The various surviving IMDb forums have threads on the plot too:

https://moviechat.org/tt1230385/Hwanghae/58c87d58d1ea5c147071df71/MANY-Plot-questions
https://moviechat.org/tt1230385/Hwanghae/58c87d5bd1ea5c147071dfe4/Things-that-need-to-be-answered-SPOILERS
https://moviechat.org/tt1230385/Hwanghae/58c87d59d1ea5c147071dfa3/Any-Korean-who-can-explain-this-for-me-Spoiler-Alert?reply=58c87d59d1ea5c147071dfa5

https://www.filmboards.com/board/t/MANY-Plot-questions-48723/
https://www.filmboards.com/board/t/Things-that-need-to-be-answered:-SPOILERS-48754/
https://www.filmboards.com/board/p/474712/permalink/#p474712

Damn. Nobody told me there is an original 2h36m theatrical version. Perhaps released on BR too, in Korea.

Mine's 2h20m — that "Director's Cut" already felt very long.

- spoiler tag
- yes, she is alive at the end, with nobody to pick her up at the train station

from Wikipedia:
Yoo Young-chul explained his motives in front of a TV camera saying "Women shouldn't be sluts, and the rich should know what they've done."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoo_Young-chul

Sorry, I meant if The Guest and Priest, compared to each other, are the same amount of horror. Not compared to this one.
(Very quick reply 💞)

Are The Guest and Priest equally horrory?

What's the point of not finding out who sent the traitor / assassins? Is it just because knowing it's his father would irrevocably damage their relationship?
Especially unconvincing that Crown Prince kills this very useful information source mere minutes after being unable to stab an actual assassin.

Beyond shooting about two arrows and calming down his crazy people once or twice, the CP does very little that makes him seem like he could be the confident, well, king he is in the final scene. He's a new character once he embarks from that boat.

--

I find it very unclear how they actually escape from the mountain fort. They push a few burning Mad Max vehicles at the Japanese, and then we teleport onto a beach where they're chased by them.

It was a huge waste how "the barbarian" aka the captured-yet-hyper-loyal Jurchen fighter ran into his death at the end. His ingenuity showed him to be Joseon's leading administrative organizer & black ops agent.

After some intro / setup, there's what feels like an hour and half of Fitzcarraldo, and later on one of those generic movies about a small heroic group being attacked by an overwhelming force is spliced in.

Like other posters wrote, there's a lot of nice nature to look at.

Dunno if it's edited in CGI blood or just particularly dark red fake blood, but I kept noticing it. Good combat scenes otherwise.

The cast was good with a lot of familiar faces; only Park Ho San as the king (father) at the start didn't seem kingly at all.

I don't buy the crown prince's character development, or the other ML's affection for him.

[intro text]
"The practice of the rich hiring the poor to serve their compulsory military duties is prevalent but impossible to stop.
Near the Northern Border, some men pursue this military substitute jobs as a profession, known as Proxy Soldiers."
-from Sejong Chronicles.

------

[ending crown prince voice over]
Do you know why there are two dragons on that flag?
One represents the King and the other, the people, would it not?

[end text]
"Those who took refuge in the mountains and also the other subjects responded to Prince Gwanghae's call to rise against the invaders to risk their life and kill the enemy.
This became the driving force for driving out the enemy, and rebuilding the country later."
-from Seonjo chronicles.

I really wish they wouldn't have done the same kind of villain as Haechi – I was already worn out from that one. The harmless chef suddenly becomes a mass murderer just because the manhwa needs a surprise twist. He does some horrendously evil things: slaughtering a village of innocents for no particular reason, and a child from his own family too.
But afterwards, he's tame. His evilness is in the fridge.
He and the ML could kill each other a dozen times, but it doesn't happen – Haechi has an elaborate explanation that you can't just kill a prince repeated from time to time, but there's still enough opportunities here for out-of-palace murder anyway.
The villain could do all sorts of horrendous things to the FL, but he just never does, so he isn't a real threat much after his initial evil deeds.


OTOH nobody really thinks of punishing him for his evilness. The widows don't in the end, and the king just doesn't care because he's laughably easy to manipulate.

There's some K-drama golden rules the writers seemingly didn't know about, like how much precisely they're supposed to punish their characters for moral transgressions, but they stick to one I'd really love to see just ONE single exception for: "based on manhwa" infallibly implies plot problems. Some characters don't make much sense, many plot points fizzle out and disappear or stop making much sense in hindsight, others are never pursued or handwaved away in the most arbitrary of ways. Sometimes the ML is way smarter and more competent than anyone could possibly be – you might like or dislike that.
In this particular show there's also a bunch of bad dialogues from time to time, but without a command of the language it's of course hard to tell how much is the fault of Netflix' translator.


I liked the first third or so, when it was a fluffy action comedy with a bit of a hunt for the truth. When it tried to get more serious, it also started to drag a bit. The ML does great in the acting department, and nobody's overly poor in their roles. The FL is too often like a modern teenager in her expressions – she's not bad here, but definitely not great.
Child actress Park Da Yeon as Hwang Aeng Do got to hog all the good comedy lines for herself.

For me it kinda went downhill the moment the villain appeared, I only liked him as a chef.
The whole storyline from the villain's appearance on feels like a toned down Haechi.

In the end nobody even cares anymore that he not only killed unarmed women but also a child from his own family.

I'm curious how you would like Haechi in this regard.