Acting/Cast: I have no complains for the acting of the main couple. Zhu-Lie seems to exhibit more emotion towards In-Jun who seems to be the naive, honest-to-goodness Busan boy type character. The only person with acting problem is the guy who plays the role of Zhu-Lie's friend who can speak Korean...it was obvious he's new and his acting was odd at places. Other than that, everyone's done a good job. There were a couple of odd 'bridging' scenes where ppl do not speak (or speak little) and just look at each other with multiple expressions on their faces. I put that down to the awkwardness of communication when one is speaking Mandarin and another, Korean. That can be interpreted as a natural scene in real life when you have ppl speaking different languages trying to communicate to each other. You'll end up using nonverbal communication and one letter words instead. The actors and actresses in this movie use 3 languages:- Korean, Mandarin and English. If you ask me, where international romances are involved, this is a very normal situation.
Music: Love the OST sung by Park Si-Hoo and the faster beat ending OST.
Rewatch value: I give this a pretty high rewatch value simply because it's a movie. This is an easy watch -simple love story and just require 1 hour and 45 mins of your time. Some ppl complain about the slower pace but I find the pace acceptable. I've watched many melodramas, a bit of an expert in Chinese movies (hence used to their style of story-telling) and trust me when I say the pace of this movie is much better than a typical melodrama. Everything flows nicely towards an ending that did not feel rushed. If you are bored out in a weekend and just want to watch something passable and uncomplicated, this is the movie for you.
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However, it is beautiful to look at cinematically. The visuals were stunning and whomever the cinematographer was, they did a terrific job. Loved the scenes of Shanghai and the neighborhood this was filmed in was so picturesque I wanted to move there! It appears to be dubbed, to it's detriment...also adding in sounds like footsteps, breathing, gasps, grunts, etc.that are too loud and very distracting. The entire soundtrack for the movie was just uncomfortable to listen to.
PSH is gorgeous and so healthy looking in this, thankfully, and speaks a lot of English and quite well! Surprising. His time spent here in the US was well used I think. He was the best in this by far as far as the acting, but with a script as simple as this there was very little 'acting' needed by anyone. Which was good since the rest of the cast were pretty awful. They all appear to be very new or very inexperienced. The best of them being the young man who served as an interpreter. Still I was just so happy to see Park Si Hoo looking so good and doing so well. It was worth watching for the relief from worry. 6/10 for the terrible script, acting, and directing. 8/10 for the joy of seeing PSH get his feet wet and putting forth the effort it must have cost him to move on with his acting life. He did a good job with some pretty bad material. I understand the movie did very well in China where he is immensely popular.
I hope his next project, with a leading lady who has more strength, will be better for him, but I really wish he would find another project similar to Confessions. It would be good to see him take on darker parts, more action oriented to fit in with his martial arts and sporting background.
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His leading lady, I'm not a fan of her acting,she irritated me.The supporting cast was okay, non-thing to scream about...All in all it was worth watching, hoping that now hes gotten his feet wet, he will be a little more comfortable in his next movie.
The movie was a 6/10 for me typical story, bad directing but, he got a 8/10 for doing the part and giving his best and for moving on with his acting life.
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