As a spy suspense thriller, The Rebel is outstanding in the art direction and cinematography, and the ACTING. This might be the best acted cdrama for the year! I have seen the director's most recent previous work-- Dream Detective. Although he is listed as screenwriter, I read in an article that he had went onsite and participated in the production. The similarity that I see in the art direction in Dream Detective and The Rebel-- very good nuanced shots of the emo scenes. This drama has frequent scenes of one character just sitting there, contemplating on the events and what to do next. And just like in Dream Detective, a lot of the characters' thoughts, love between the main leads were not expressed in words. The Rebel left it up to viewers if Chen Mo Qun ever knew who had instigated his downfall, if Lan Xin Jie ever loved Lin Nan Sheng, etc.. (ps: if you are intrigued and want to check out Dream Detective, please note this is still not subbed).

To be honest, up until the 20+ eps I thought this would be a 9.5 or 10 stars for me. Unfortunately, the script did not manage to hold up the story. The novel that this is adapted from is actually quite a short story, so 7 screenwriters are roped into the production to expand on the storyline and add in more scenes. Maybe they hired such a big team of screenwriters to ensure the details would be accurate per historical places and events but this also created an unevenness in the overall plot-- drama started off quite intelligent, and dipped into stupidity in the middle parts, and the ending..... the built-up to the ending was so strong, so good, but dip into predictability in the last ep -_-" In between, when some good supporting characters were going to die, the script gave special attention to their interactions with ML, but this only give viewers "red flag", as if telling me, yup he's going to die soon (and he did die quickly, in the same ep). Script is too predictable.

Characters are very well-written in this drama, and the developments and changes in their personas. Some of the most brilliant character developments..... The gradual changes in Lin Nan Sheng, Chen Mo Qun, Wang Shi An and Lin Xin Jie, how the events, environment and years slowly changed them are very well depicted. Kudos to the actors!!! Erm, notice how I did not mention on the FL, Zhu Yi Zhen. Although she went through a lot too, the free spirited, idealistic Zhu Yi Zhen at the beginning still look same to the Zhu Yi Zhen at the end, albeit she became more mature. Tong Yao is a very good actress, she had won awards! The problem is in the script, I guess production decided to make the FL role more like a tool to facilitate certain events. Such that the mistake she made at the beginning, she again made a similar mistake at the end (she was very bad at reading people). She was said to have attended military training, etc but we really don't see much development in her at all.

Soundtrack is really good! Do not skip the intro (don't worry, no spoiler in it)! Ending song is awesome too \o/ Overall however, The Rebel was a disappointment for me, had expected more.