Annoyingly disappointing

Just finished this today. Extremely disappointed but not surprised. I was easily caught up with the narrative and characters in the beginning, and Han Hyo-joo's performance as a competent special forces soldier had a great unselfconscious swagger of someone with confidence in themseles. and her equally unselfconscious selfcentredness in the beginning when schemng to get the apartment was genuinely amusing. But from about halfway through I was watching more from duty and still some interest in what would happen to Sae-bom than anything else. Perhaps it is because the really strange social setup and peculiar startification of class (?) which comes across as pretty alien even to this British person who has been used to class-consciousness all their life. It just seems *different* and hard to believe that anyone would have put up with it even for a day in such unusual emergency situation. The whole idea that people would be ordered about like that by people with no real authority is genuinely amazing. This seemed MUCH mor emphasised than in any other KDrama I have seen (except maybe THE PENTHOUSE) and I watch a lot. Anyway, tht made it hard to completely empathise with and suspend disbelief. And then the whole coherence of the plot seemed to unravel. Now I completely accept that I may be missing subtleties in the original Korean, but the narrative as supplied by the subtitling started to make no sense at all. I actually put off watching the final ep for several days because I felt it was going to be a let down, and it was worse than I had expected. So, good beginning, gradually declining middle, and totally weak ending. The most disappointing Kdrama I have seen *all the way through*

(I am the sort of person who recently watched and loved 'Hotel del Luna', 'Hometown Cha Cha Cha' and 'Sell your Haunted House', 'Attorney Woo' and 'Mad for each Other' and 'Inspector Koo', just in case that explains my reaction!)

Leggi di Più

Real old fashioned pantomime

We thoroughly enoyeded this, finding it by looking out for things featuring the fabulous Maya Miki, who doesn't feature very much but it was still very good. It has much of the flavour of a real old fashioned British stage pantomime, which often had a lot of fairytale characters mixed together, It was indeed very 'stagey' which was fine for us but seems to have disappointed people who wanted more opened-out action. It was funny - laughed out loud a couple of times - and the plot was intricate enough to be a surprise without being confusing. Perfect Xmas holiday viewing. (There are a lot of negative reviews on IMDB, mostly people complaining about this film not being something that it didn't set out to be. ) Good to see Hashimoto Kanna in something other than schoolgirl killer mode (loved ANIMAL SQUAD!) and would definately want to see more of this Red Riding Hood's adventures.

Leggi di Più

very very good

Just finished watching this, a couple of years behind everyone else but then there's no expriy date on excellent television. Abolutely loved it, every moment, and jang Na-ra's performance is absultely grupping, spellbinding, notew perfect in every sece. I'm getting used to the excellence of Korean female lead actors but this was a standout alongside IU's work in Hotel del Luna. And the ending - which is sometimes either a little rushed or too drawn out in Kdrama - was completely perfect, giving a completely acceptable rounding off of the story.

Obviously production qualities were superb.

One question, and I hope someone can help; the music we hear on the actual soundtrack does not all seem to be on the OST that I have found on the internet. (I cannot find a copy of the cd) I am particularly interested in the instrumental sections, particularly the main title opening credits theme. PLEASE can someone tell me what the full soundtrack credits are - on the actual drama, not the OST.

Really great television. Next for us is going to be something more recent - THE BEQUEATHED - which I have seen only a few minutes of so far but looks good.

Leggi di Più

Agree with 3GGG above - fatal flaw in this

Like the other reviewer I think this is 'made for me' - three strong female leads including my current favourite screen actor Choi Kang Hee - and the production is excellent and it is written very well, and all the interactions between the characters are fine (particularly like Kim Ji Young's 'Mi Soon') but it just doesn;t hold together - and almost immediately I realised what was wrong - all those idiotically extended fight/action sequences, they just go on and on to no purpose whatsoever, taking up a significant percentage of most episodes. The series would have been 10 eps top without them, I am sure. I feel cheated - so many good aspects to this and yet I didn't enjoy it, and would find it hard to recommend. If this had concentrated more on the three main characters, obviously some some action and character peril for tension, it would have been brilliant.

Leggi di Più