Sangdo (2001)

Decent

Turned out to be a decent story. I really appreciated how it focuses on the individuals with a reasonable scoop while taking into consideration their surrounding rather than throwing in mindless connections to make the story more grand without relevant purpose such as wars/nations/kingdoms/factions. Although it started to lean a little bit into the other side towards the end, unfortunately, this is the fault of its runtime. Which brings me to my next point, the drama is definitely too long for its content and it would benefit greatly if it were to be condensed down to ~25 episodes, it would make a much more compelling package. Because of this, the drama had a serious issue with flashbacks. There was a one piece of dialogue that was repeated almost every other episode for its entire runtime, a bit too much! I liked the first 2/3 more than the last 1/3, things were changing at an unreasonable pace as we were approaching the end, you may say it was rushed. The last ~10 episodes were full of rapid changes where the drama felt like it lost it direction and didn't know how to stir it towards the end. The production seems to be passable despite its flaws even when taking into consideration that this was made in the early 2000s. Some scenes you will notice some great attention to details while other scenes you can see the tape of their fake facial hair.

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