lokis_mistress

I adore Hathaway. Was very excited to see she had a new movie because it's been awhile since Hollywood had anything that I was interested in watching. And ten years ago... this would have been a fantastic movie. It's just, unfortunately, a bit late to the older woman attracts hot fancy guy party. It's just not a new story anymore. And if that's all the story's got, then there's not really anything new to tell.

Every part of this movie was formula, from Coachella to feminist mother / daughter besties to flashy exes who have ego issues. Literally the script wrote itself. But it's 2024, we aren't sitting around the pool being catty at the older woman anymore. We are asking her how she danced to Smalltown Boy in the 80s. If these women are feminists they are going to own their happiness AND their mom's happiness and not go sulking to daddy to make a point. Have any of the writers MET Gen Z?

I suppose my disappointment is in the waste of a good cast and decent budget. Things are shifting and the people who are trying to sell us on a couple hours of relatable fantasy need to step up their game and make more of an effort to be AHEAD of the curve. Maybe hire younger, less "experienced" writers moving forward. 'Cause this "new" was SO seventh grade.

To be fair, this is not the worst cop kDrama out there. I've seen plenty worse so I gave this a solid 5 for having a good cast and some worthy plot highlights. But that makes the sloppy writing and lame plot holes an even worse offense.

In fact, the entire kDrama industry seems to exist to make Koreans look naive and clueless. How many times can a lead actor and every other supporting actor enter a dark alley (or junkyard) on their own, defenseless, without any plan or backup on alert, or anyone else knowing where they are, all while knowing three gangs, a drug cartel, a murderous high ranking government official or assassin or corrupt police detective/chief/prosecutor and a handful of random informants all have a price on their head?

There was some real potential here. Most notably a fantastic cast. I simply don't understand why Korean writers think it's totally ok to have a reasonably intelligent detective connecting dots while simultaneously throwing themselves headlong into utterly asinine situations... on repeat. In literally every movie. I mean, these things must cost a reasonable amount to produce, no? Please... try harder. Give your talent something to work with.

So close. Really, it's so, so close to being really good. Not AMAZING like some of the K-dramas I've seen, but they can't all be genius. There are some great ideas, the character development is fantastic and works well for the plot, which isn't always the case. Great acting for the most part, especially from Kim Se-jeong, Yoo Jun-sang, Lee Hong-nae and even Choi Gang-il. I'll be looking for Hong-nae in other series to see what else he can do. The writing and direction is excellent until the last few episodes, which is REALLY frustrating. I heard they lost the original writer around episode 12 and that makes sense because it just gets lazy from there out. Had they retained the original writer I think this would have been brilliant. The industry should learn from this. It was riveting for ten episodes, even with so much going on, then the FF button came in handy after that.

Note to actors: crying and wailing is not the only way to convey emotional turmoil. In fact trauma and conflict was SO well portrayed by Yoo in this that he is going on my favourite actors list. He played his character incredibly well and his range was brilliant even though his character didn't actually need to be to keep the show good. 11/10. Se-jeong was a treat, especially after seeing her in Business Proposal as a completely different character. Very dry, however anything but boring. Really, every supporting character was fantastic. And I really think that Byeong-kyu's issues were a director led flaw rather than his own. If you're directing a show with this many layers, you need to know when to play each emotional card and to which extent. It can't always be either 3 or 10.

However, hands down the biggest issue with this was the many, many plot holes. Many. Many many. Viewers are too intelligent to just let a few storyline slips go, and this was a LOT of oopses. You can't simply level up a side without context to keep the story going. Lazy. You DEFINITELY can't just randomly level up one side, then the other, then the first side again etc and hope nobody notices. For example, bringing in some random artifact with no backstory that could have been used to deal with the issue in the first place and saved a lot of headache? Lazy. Bringing in a new, well thought out character that was hinted at early on is a good move. Having a solid group of intelligent, familiar and talented individuals consistently making stupid mistakes just to draw the story out is bad. Bringing back a plot thread that the audience had all but forgotten about though, that's good writing.

This is one of those shows that you want to hand back and say "do one last revision because if you fix these simple mistakes, you'll have something brilliant to show for it"... Is it worth the watch? Yes. But go in with low expectations so that you're pleasantly surprised, rather than the other way around.