Hoo
This review may contain spoilers
This show has no idea what it’s trying to be
Honestly this is one of the worst shows I’ve seen. Is this a romcom, serious romance, medical drama or war drama? Was honestly waiting for aliens to show up at one point. I have no idea what direction they’re trying to take. There will be a serious scene involving human trafficking, sexual violence, natural disasters, human loss etc and then 10 minutes later they’re walking through an active minefield and smiling with happy music in the background??
Speaking first of the cinematography, it’s awful, every scene has the brightness cranked to 100. The entire show is so washed out because of it, each shooting location looks the same; lifeless, empty and bland. I have honestly never seen something this bad in my memory. The sets themselves don’t help the case because it just looks like a random hill where soldiers are stationed for fun with a couple generic broken ruins around. I’ll talk about my major issues with Uruk in general in a bit.
In terms of the writing it’s truly horrific and chock full of really cringe English dialogue that’s tough to listen to. The main leads have negative chemistry, the show spends 10 episodes going nowhere with their romance and then they slowly start heading….absolutely nowhere only to wrap it up in the last 1-2 episodes. Legitimately 80% of this show is just repeating the same “can I date a soldier” and “idk what my feelings are” for every episode sprinkled in with the stupid side plots. I also think that probably about 20 hours of this show was a gun standoff because that’s totally realistic.
The second love interests are equally as bad but Kim Jiwon was the stole charismatic actor in this show. The medical stuff let’s not get into because I don’t wanna roast this 11 year old looking supposed doctor whimpering away.
Moving onto Uruk, what in gods name was this racist caricature of a country? It’s supposed to be modeled after Iraq but looks nothing remotely like it. I don’t expect them to fly over there and film but zero effort in staging was put in, just change the setting if you can’t be bothered to make something believable. 35% of the city are Korean expats and the rest are a mix of every culture in existence. Let’s add some Russians, some people with dark skin, some white kids, some ladies with hijabs, alright let’s wrap it up! Not to mention the constant racist tropes of Arabs just scattered around like the casual oil barons pulling up and how these “Arabs” don’t want foreign doctors touching their leader and would rather him die as if that would ever happen.
In terms of acting I’m genuinely shocked at some of the high reviews. Not a massive Song Joon Ki fan anyway but this is one of his worst if not worst performance. He was horribly cast, he does not give off a strong special forces vibe at all and his acting is just so unbelievable I couldn’t help laughing at serious scenes when he’d start speaking English. Song Hye Kyo was equally as rough, her dialogue, body language and delivery were so off it looked like a complete rookie. There was zero chemistry between the two. Like I mentioned earlier Kim Jiwon is the only who put up a great performance.
Speaking first of the cinematography, it’s awful, every scene has the brightness cranked to 100. The entire show is so washed out because of it, each shooting location looks the same; lifeless, empty and bland. I have honestly never seen something this bad in my memory. The sets themselves don’t help the case because it just looks like a random hill where soldiers are stationed for fun with a couple generic broken ruins around. I’ll talk about my major issues with Uruk in general in a bit.
In terms of the writing it’s truly horrific and chock full of really cringe English dialogue that’s tough to listen to. The main leads have negative chemistry, the show spends 10 episodes going nowhere with their romance and then they slowly start heading….absolutely nowhere only to wrap it up in the last 1-2 episodes. Legitimately 80% of this show is just repeating the same “can I date a soldier” and “idk what my feelings are” for every episode sprinkled in with the stupid side plots. I also think that probably about 20 hours of this show was a gun standoff because that’s totally realistic.
The second love interests are equally as bad but Kim Jiwon was the stole charismatic actor in this show. The medical stuff let’s not get into because I don’t wanna roast this 11 year old looking supposed doctor whimpering away.
Moving onto Uruk, what in gods name was this racist caricature of a country? It’s supposed to be modeled after Iraq but looks nothing remotely like it. I don’t expect them to fly over there and film but zero effort in staging was put in, just change the setting if you can’t be bothered to make something believable. 35% of the city are Korean expats and the rest are a mix of every culture in existence. Let’s add some Russians, some people with dark skin, some white kids, some ladies with hijabs, alright let’s wrap it up! Not to mention the constant racist tropes of Arabs just scattered around like the casual oil barons pulling up and how these “Arabs” don’t want foreign doctors touching their leader and would rather him die as if that would ever happen.
In terms of acting I’m genuinely shocked at some of the high reviews. Not a massive Song Joon Ki fan anyway but this is one of his worst if not worst performance. He was horribly cast, he does not give off a strong special forces vibe at all and his acting is just so unbelievable I couldn’t help laughing at serious scenes when he’d start speaking English. Song Hye Kyo was equally as rough, her dialogue, body language and delivery were so off it looked like a complete rookie. There was zero chemistry between the two. Like I mentioned earlier Kim Jiwon is the only who put up a great performance.
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