3
2
Salatheel
Good performances but laboured writing and overdone direction.
I really tried hard to talk up this drama, but it became increasingly hard and all my excuses eventually fell by the wayside. Compared to something like See You in My 19th Life, the plot held together reasonably well but was built around standard and somewhat tired tropes. The performances by the leads were good. You Yeon Seok did a good job of bringing subtlety to his tsundere character. And Heo Nam Jun as the villain, when he wasn’t being required to overact, was credible. But there’s the problem for you in a nutshell, the directing… the job of the director is to set the tone for the whole production, and direct the actors and cinematographer to harmonise with it. Here it was just too over the top. Melo on steroids.
It had the hallmarks of a 1920s silent film, grandiose gestures, limp women and stoic men, dramatic low camera angles and slow leaden footsteps at every opportunity.
The cost of overplaying things is that it fails to capture you and attach you to the story and the characters. The problem with overhyped dramatisation is that there is nowhere to go, no room to build, it’s full on from the get go, and bye bye subtlety. With the result that instead of being moved I’m always at the point of laughter.
To make it believable you have to follow through on a set up. Too often the characters would not do the obvious in order to prolong the plot. The result is a lot of eye rolling, sighing and FFS exclamations for the viewer. Completely cutting through any credibility, but much more seriously, any sympathy for the characters.
The pacing was sacrificed to an over-detailed explanatory style, leaking tension all over the place. It needed less words and more faster paced action to fulfil its role as a thriller. Frequent, unnecessary repetitions of scenes in the editing did not help either.
The performances were good, it’s a pity that the directing, writing and editing were so laboured.
What my rating means: 6+ Some aspects of it were OK but it had serious flaws. It will pass the time but you can find something better.
It had the hallmarks of a 1920s silent film, grandiose gestures, limp women and stoic men, dramatic low camera angles and slow leaden footsteps at every opportunity.
The cost of overplaying things is that it fails to capture you and attach you to the story and the characters. The problem with overhyped dramatisation is that there is nowhere to go, no room to build, it’s full on from the get go, and bye bye subtlety. With the result that instead of being moved I’m always at the point of laughter.
To make it believable you have to follow through on a set up. Too often the characters would not do the obvious in order to prolong the plot. The result is a lot of eye rolling, sighing and FFS exclamations for the viewer. Completely cutting through any credibility, but much more seriously, any sympathy for the characters.
The pacing was sacrificed to an over-detailed explanatory style, leaking tension all over the place. It needed less words and more faster paced action to fulfil its role as a thriller. Frequent, unnecessary repetitions of scenes in the editing did not help either.
The performances were good, it’s a pity that the directing, writing and editing were so laboured.
What my rating means: 6+ Some aspects of it were OK but it had serious flaws. It will pass the time but you can find something better.
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