4
Giuca
Lost in the Cloud....
This review may contain spoilers
Larger than life
Well, well, well this was a very strange trip.
As I was watching it, I thought it had been based on a manga. It gave me that feeling of being out of proportion, fantastically real. Even the main protagonists names tell a story: Summer, a boy, and Winter a girl.
Winter used to be called Alice and was a student of a particularly twisted school in England training children to become assassins. One day she decides to escape and severely injures the school principal, a psycho of the tallest order. She escapes to Korea and hides in Summer's school. He is a loony kind of a boy, suffering from a trauma, put on suicide watch and constantly asking to be beaten up in order to feel alive. The principal activates his criminal network in order to find Alice. And when he does, all hell breaks loose!
You have everything in this short drama, so much so, I wished it were longer. Just read the tags. What I liked the most was the black humour in this. Every character in this drama is seriously twisted, the world they live in is a genuine nightmare. And Summer is the king of this world. He is deadpan, untouchable in his school. He is so calm that he scares the local bullies. And he finds a soulmate in Winter, who is his opposite, trying to be normal. He does not care about being normal, he is only looking for a reason to live in this cutthroat world. Winter gives him that reason.
What is this about? Only gratuitous violence? Not necessarily. In a twisted, strange way it tells you a version of "nature or nurture". Can you be taught to be a killer or do you need an incentive to kill? Alice was raised to be a killer but could not kill until her soulmate was killed (or she thought so!). Both of them, ultimately, do not think twice and kill in order to protect each other.
The actors are all amazing but especially the one playing Summer, Song Geon Hee. He managed to express Summer's feelings and states of mind through a single almost invariable wide smile: that could be goofy and cute quickly becoming crazy and ending up surprised all within a minute! Amazing! Give this guy more lead roles!
This is not an easy drama to watch: it is very bloody and violent but everything, at the same time, is so exaggerated. Cinematography goes well with this: it is gray, dark almost monochrome.
Ultimate Weapon Alice is not for everyone: the violence, the ugliness, the violence, the insanity and the violence is the main theme here!
As I was watching it, I thought it had been based on a manga. It gave me that feeling of being out of proportion, fantastically real. Even the main protagonists names tell a story: Summer, a boy, and Winter a girl.
Winter used to be called Alice and was a student of a particularly twisted school in England training children to become assassins. One day she decides to escape and severely injures the school principal, a psycho of the tallest order. She escapes to Korea and hides in Summer's school. He is a loony kind of a boy, suffering from a trauma, put on suicide watch and constantly asking to be beaten up in order to feel alive. The principal activates his criminal network in order to find Alice. And when he does, all hell breaks loose!
You have everything in this short drama, so much so, I wished it were longer. Just read the tags. What I liked the most was the black humour in this. Every character in this drama is seriously twisted, the world they live in is a genuine nightmare. And Summer is the king of this world. He is deadpan, untouchable in his school. He is so calm that he scares the local bullies. And he finds a soulmate in Winter, who is his opposite, trying to be normal. He does not care about being normal, he is only looking for a reason to live in this cutthroat world. Winter gives him that reason.
What is this about? Only gratuitous violence? Not necessarily. In a twisted, strange way it tells you a version of "nature or nurture". Can you be taught to be a killer or do you need an incentive to kill? Alice was raised to be a killer but could not kill until her soulmate was killed (or she thought so!). Both of them, ultimately, do not think twice and kill in order to protect each other.
The actors are all amazing but especially the one playing Summer, Song Geon Hee. He managed to express Summer's feelings and states of mind through a single almost invariable wide smile: that could be goofy and cute quickly becoming crazy and ending up surprised all within a minute! Amazing! Give this guy more lead roles!
This is not an easy drama to watch: it is very bloody and violent but everything, at the same time, is so exaggerated. Cinematography goes well with this: it is gray, dark almost monochrome.
Ultimate Weapon Alice is not for everyone: the violence, the ugliness, the violence, the insanity and the violence is the main theme here!
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