Rating: ***.5
Genre: Action, Melodrama , Romance
Episodes: 20
Cast: Bi, Daniel Henney, Lee Jung Jin, Lee Na Young, Uehara Takako
"During the Korean War, a vast amount of money disappeared. Now, some 60 years later, the money has reappeared, leading to a frantic chase across the globe. Jin Yi (Lee Na Young) is a seemingly innocent woman who has hidden motives for approaching Ji Woo (Bi). Her plans are complicated by an unexpected romance developing between them, as well as the numerous pursuers hot on their trail. Kieko (Uehara Takako) is a famous Japanese singer who also gets tangled up in a relationship with this man. Little do they know that her father Hiroki (Takenaka Naoto), apart from being a business man, is a powerful yakuza. In this love triangle, who will finally win the love of Ji Woo?"
Although I enjoyed a lot of the drama, there were certain elements of it that kind of put me off. I don't doubt that it was a decent television show, but it's not something I would re-watch over and over again.
In any case, I'm about to do a very long review of the good/bad stuff.
Some of this may contain spoilers, though, so don't read any further than this if you don't want to know.
The series starts out with the cheesiest.... opening.... ever... Predictable, reckless, and nowhere near realistic. It looks like they copied and pasted a scene from just about any action movie ever created, complete with walking away from an exploding car. I really don't know what they were thinking when they shot that scene. If you're going to shoot something that cheesy, at least make it look more realistic so that people actually watch the series. I bet that's the reason why some viewers didn't even watch it past the first few minutes.
I also have to state that Rain's character, Ji Woo, is way over dramatic... What happened to Rain's acting from Full House? Did the director direct him to act like that? The character just doesn't work very well. Compared to how serious he was in the action scene, it doesn't make much sense. It would have worked better if he got slightly distracted during the action scene by all the women. It also would have been less predictable and show the character as serious about his work, but also a woman-lover.
The one thing I enjoyed was the range of languages showcased in this show. Korean (obviously), Chinese (Mandarin), Japanese, and I believe there was even a bit of Thai in there. Also, the English was usually pretty clean and I didn't need subtitles in order to figure out what they were saying. (One of the many advantages of having the amazing Daniel Henney in the cast) In fact, I understood a lot of the Japanese in there as well as I'm familiar with the languages. (That's one of the advantages of being a tube obsessed person. By watching films from all over the world, you pick up languages quite easily.)
Over all, I thought the first episode was comic-like. I think it would have been better to play on the comic style of the drama a bit more. I thought it was fun though.
A few other notes:
1. A police officer gets shot while wearing a bulletproof vest. The next scene, though, he has no holes in his shirt.
2. Whether they get shot at, get into a car reck, or jump out of a window, they don't get even a cut on them.
3. What's with the "Gloria in Excelsis Deo" music? It's a bit of a strange selection, don't you think?
