Hei Bai Sen Lin (2024)

Great Acting but the Storyline was a Choppy Mess & the gun was STOLEN not lost!

I only came about this series last minute because I had previously watched DYX in 4 costume dramas this year so wanted to see him in a totally different genre. Now he and the rest of the actors (some I've seen while others I haven't) did a phenomenal job at their characters but the script was just a choppy mess and I was so sick of them talking about the gun being lost and how he had to take responsibility when the dude was knocked out and the thing stolen off his person.

Pros: Honestly, just the acting of the actors; DYX did a wonderful job, just wish the script was strong. Every character was believable and did their part for as long as they were needed. DLE or as I called him the Hawaiian shirted gangster was literally the comic relief of the show. How everyone was able to convincingly speak in whichever dialect of mandarin that was, was very cool. Mastermind was truly cruel and used everyone to his advantage. The worst was NF; because he killed her father but made her believe he was her benefactor until right before she was shot by the SWAT team. He manipulated this poor girl her entire life into becoming a spy and assassin for him and then called it her atonement for what her father did. Losing LTY, then her, then Bao Ge (though that was inevitable) was hard. But the mastermind being very smart that he planned everything for something like 12 years and his actor played him well. Sad part was that LTY didn't like nor trust him from the beginning but no one believed him and than he was killed by the guy, that one hurt the most.

Cons: The storyline was a mess. Ok there's a mastermind that had ML's gun STOLEN but that was constantly referred to as a lost gun and he was suspended over it not to mention yelled at because all of these other cops SML included would somehow be super human if knocked over the head with a metal pipe and be able to retain his service pistol. That was a crock of shit. The cops themselves couldn't catch a bad guy red handed if he came to them on a silver platter which included whole departments, SWAT included. Meanwhile WBB (ML) and his best friend LTY were always in the path and somehow either slowed the person getting away down or caught him for said flailing cops.

Furthermore, no one could really tell when ML met NF; one moment you think they just got to know each other a little while ago and he just has a crush on her and then a few episodes later you find out he’s been in love with her since they were young. That’s what I mean by choppy and messy. There was absolutely no need for romance in this drama or even the slight possibility of it. And the way it was written, was screwed up as well.

For 26 or so episodes, the bad guys were running circles around the cops. They couldn’t put 2 + 2 together to save their lives. The flashbacks in the beginning were slowly necessary more or less to piece together who the mastermind was and why (he was of course right under their noses) but his why was just a self justification for the bad things his "nephew" did and why his sister and husband died. I also had problems with the way LTY and even NF died; they weren't given proper deaths; like ok killed, next scene. At least Bao Ge had a funeral but the main antagonist's death was a total copout happening in literally the last 5 minutes of the series with the reinstatement of WBB as an officer before stupid words about characters being charged (who cares, this was fake!) and role credits.

Would I recommend it? Honestly only for the acting because the storyline was just really dumb especially when you start to realize what's happening. It's a good in between anticipated dramas show but that's it. DYX did a good job; hope he gets better scripts for modern dramas in the future.

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the plot could not be saved

To be honest, I started this without much expectations so after watching the first 1~3 episodes I was actually interested to see where this goes. But really even at episode 10 it was going nowhere only in circles…there was no progression to the story and the writing was really bad. To the extent where policemen were as good as regular citizens they had no upper hand at all.

The crime part of this drama is practically nothing. There isn’t any exciting mystery to solve. Halfway through the drama, it changes to a business orientated show where suddenly everyone is fighting for the business.

The reveal of the villain was build up in a very obvious way so there wasn’t anything shocking (sad…cause i felt like they could have executed that portion in a much better way). There were wayyyy to many side characters I couldn’t even keep track of who is who because they tend to use nicknames instead of full names.

I watched this for Ding Yuxi, so his acting made me push through till the end. But it’s not a drama I would recommend >< It was a good challenge and interesting genre to take on which could have excelled if the writing was good.

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