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limaje

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limaje

Australia
Ra Raerng Fai thai drama review
Completed
Ra Raerng Fai
0 people found this review helpful
by limaje
Oct 10, 2022
14 of 14 episodes seen
Completed
Overall 10
Story 10.0
Acting/Cast 10.0
Music 10.0
Rewatch Value 10.0

A must watch

The Story:
This is one of the best written dramas I've seen to date (having seen many). The story is superbly told with no obvious plot holes or leaps in logic that you so often see in Thai Lakorns. The production is slick and rich. An intelligent, highly entertaining story. The two leads have an amazing, sizzling chemistry. This is a slap/kiss but quite a light one in that department. Women are treated respectfully by the story and the dignity and worth of women is upheld by some dialogue and the characters, including our lovely bad boy, the ML. There are no rape scenes, but one attempted sexual assault which is suitably dealt with. There are no evil love rivals (something I really dislike in dramas.) Stories like this prove that you can have a quality drama with good tension without the need of cliched evil love rivals doing their best to de-rail the love story.

The characters:
P.Kritt: Ken as we've come to expect, delivers a brilliantly believable character. One part of your brain is saying 'this is make believe', but the other part is so caught up in the story and the characters that you really think they're real. A hallmark of a well written story is to 'suspend disbelief', and that's exactly what this one does for me. I felt so sad for his character in a lot of the episodes, especially when he's reacting to the rocky relationship with Yada, whom he truly loved right from the beginning. But it took her a long time to came to that same degree of love for him. His character was flawed and to be pitied, but in the end, he experienced a huge character growth and turned his life around. The dangers he had to face to do this for his family proved that his character growth was sincere and complete. A wonderfully complex and brilliantly portrayed character. An added bonus is that he's just so darned good to look at, who wouldn't love him!

Yada: Another good acting job by the actress, Nune. This character generated conflicting emotions for me. I started out being grateful that she was feisty, independant, intelligent and confident. A direct opposite to a lot of the FL characters who are nit witted doormats who do everything but verbally beg to be abused by the ML. Not this one. However, around ep 10 or so, my feeling started to change to one of dislike for this character. She was stupidly stubborn in protecting the no-good father, despite overwhelming evidence. She aided and abbetted him in breaking the law, and importantly, she refused to listen to or trust P.Kritt when he tried to tell her differently. This causes a lot of hurt to P.Kritt which is why I'm so sympathetic to his character and not so sympathetic to hers. She condemns him for doing dispicable things, but she in turns exacts revenge on P.Kritt in one of the cruelest ways (Ep 11) which made me so angry at her. By the end, she came round but I never managed to regain the initial sympathy I had for her in the beginning. Yes his character had a lot of bad flaws and he did some terrible things. She expected him to change from that, but didn't appear to think that she needed to change herself. Once again, this is a testimony to a great acting job by Nune.

P.Khem (Yada's sister). Hated this character absolutely. She was weak and vengeful, jealous and manipulative. No wonder she was used as a tool in P.Kritt's revenge. She was just begging to be used . She then decides that she's not going to be pushed around anymore but instead of becoming strong and confident, she becomes spiteful, and manipulative. Stemming from I suspect, jealousy because she still loved P.Kritt but knew that he would never be hers. An altogether unsympathetic and easy to dislike character.

P.Kritt's friend, P.Na. A very nice character played very well by Aun. I've only seen him in two dramas and enjoyed both acting jobs. He's very believable. This was one of the most likeable characters. He was a good person who tried to do the right thing but recognised that his loyalty was empowering P.Kritt to continue on his dark path. He didn't put up with the self-centered trantrums of P.Khem but stood his ground. In the end, he got a partner who really didn't deserve him.

P.Nee & P.Tot. A cute couple with some sweet moments. P.Nee gave us some good, tense 'she's a wacko' moments in the earlier parts of the drama but then settled into a sweet character who tried to love as best she could. P.Tot was a young and weak character who was only just learning to stand on his own feet instead of being led around by the nose by whoever held 'authority' over him.

The comedic relief came from the Mother & daughter characters Chat and Mon. They were really funny without being annoying.

The music was beautiful. The settings were gorgeous and the production overall a real top quality.

Re-watch value. Definitely. But I'll come back to it later because some of the middle eps when the ML character was suffering emotionally were hard to watch. The ending was lovely and satisfactory with the whole story being woven together into a beautiful ending. My favourite scene is in ep 9 after they've spent their first night together and wake in each other's arms on the verandah with a gorgeous sunrise painting the sky. Swoon.

I give this a 10 out of 10, which is rare for me.
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