Mittwoch, 3. Dezember 2014

Dream

드림 (Dream) is another drama that aired in the awesome year 2009, from July 27th to September 29th. It also has a length of roughly 20 hours.

Story: Nam Jae-il is a sports agent who once was really successful but when one of his clients gets involved in a drug scandal he gets fired by the company he's working for. When he lost everything he meets Lee Jang-seok who is a huge trouble maker. Because of his good fighting skills he wants to become a K1-fighter. With the help of Park So-yeon Jae-il tries to make that happen and also earn money and get back to the top once again.

Cast: Since I'm a huge fan of Kim Bum who's character Lee Jang-seok is one of the main characters in here I decided that it's a must-watch. I knew Son Dam-bi as a singer before but never were a huge fan of hers. However, she's doing a good job as Park So-yeon and was also one of my favorite characters. Joo Jin-mo as Nam Jae-il became almost a father to Lee Jang-seok. The deep friendship those three show in the series is actually awesome. Park Sang-won as Kang Kyeong-tak is the bad guy who's close to loosing everything because of Nam Jae-il and he's desperately trying to keep his empire.

Soundtrack: Let me just mention that SHINee sang a song called "Countdown" for the soundtrack. I liked that song a lot because it fits the drama after all. And Bobby Kim sang "죽기 아니면 살기 (Die or Live)". I admit that I don't remember a lot about the soundtrack so the lack of memorability is definitely a minus but at the same time I've never hated any of the songs so after all it's really good.

After all I enjoyed this one a lot though it was different from what I've expected at first. It's still nice. But took me ages to finish this, I don't understand why.
Rating? 8/10 please, just because some things aren't perfect but in the end it's still nice.


IRIS

아이리스 (IRIS) is another drama that originally aired in 2009 (and I start to believe I've watched too many dramas that aired then..)
Don't get me wrong, I enjoy love stories but as much as I like romantic comedies I need some more action in my life.
The first season aired from October 14th to December 17th on KBS and has about 20 hours of material to watch. It was also summarized within a movie - creatively called "IRIS: The Movie" but I'll talk about the movie later.

Story: Two close friends, Kim Hyun-joong and Jin Sa-woo, who are actually working for the military in the beginning are brought into a secret organization called NSS. Both of them fall for the analyst Choi Seung-hee. Hyun-joong is brought into a solo mission in Hungary which makes him a culprit so that a lot of people are after him. He then tries to find out who put him in that position and stumbles upon a top secret organization called IRIS and tries to figure out what they actually want.

Cast: The cast is actually incredibly well-known nowadays. The main cast consist of Lee Byung-hun as Kim Hyun-joong. Kim Tae-hee who is known as one of the most beautiful actresses in Korea took the role of the female lead Choi Seung-hee. Jung Joon-ho acted as Jin Sa-woo. Kim Young-chul joined the cast as Baek San whose intentions are a huge mystery to the viewer at first. And please, let's not forget about T.O.P as Vick.

Soundtrack: While after some time some songs might be quite annoying I have to admit that the whole soundtrack is at least alright. Especially the instrumental pieces are quite similar to those you find in action movies. As for the other songs I enjoy "잊지말아요 (Don't Forget)" by Baek Ji-young a lot nowadays but while watching the drama and it was played like every 15 minutes it was way past annoying. However, I am a huge fan of Big Bang's "Hallelujah" and that's pretty surprising since I'm not a huge fan of Big Bang after all.

In the end one could guess that I really liked this drama. Well, I did like it - but sometimes the balance between the love story and the actual political and economic issues is kind of.. weird. The political aspects are complicated enough. And I admit that those love story scenes were really boring compared to the rest so I started to skip it bit by bit. That actually influences the rating a lot. So my personal rating is 6/10.