Bungee Jumping of Their Own

Is this a Boys Love movie? Well.. partly. I'll use the tag as well. BUT it's definitely not meant to be a typical gay movie!

번지점프를 하다(Bungee Jumping of Their Own) is a South Korean movie released in 2001.

Story: Seo In-woo and In Tae-hee are two college freshmen who fall in love and start dating really fast. They're sure that it's an eternal love. But one day it seems like Tae-hee is eternally disappearing out of In-woo's life because of an accident.
Seventeen years later, In-woo still loves Tae-hee though he's married to another woman and has a daughter with her. While giving lectures he notices that one of his students reminds him of Tae-hee all the time. He comes to believe that his student, Hyun-bin, is Tae-hee's reincarnation and that their love is meant to be. The end shows both men in New Zealand.

Cast: We have Lee Byung-hun as Seo In-woo. I think he did an awesome job playing the heartbroken character and he also showed the struggle of admitting feelings that are almost forbidden. No matter what you think about Lee Byung-hun as a person, he's a really good actor. As the female lead we have Lee Eun-ju as In Tae-hee. Most of the time we see her in flashbacks but she's pretty. Her role wasn't that complicated though in my opinion. And we have Yeo Hyun-soo as Lim Hyun-bin. As a student who's still in an important phase of orientation, he seems to be confused about everything. Which is completely understandable if you ask me. It's easy enough to believe the bullied and confused student how difficult the whole situation is.

My personal rating is 7.5/10. Some parts of the movie were just a little too much of a melodrama and I found myself confused about some things. Especially the rather open ending left me wondering why in the world two people would do this.. it's not like it makes things easier.
Sure it's somewhat romantic how far the two souls go.. but it still won't change the situation that much.

IRIS: The Movie

아이리스 : 더 무비 (IRIS: The Movie) is a Korean movie that basically summarizes the first season of the Korean drama series IRIS. It was released in 2010.

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.

The story is exactly the same. The cast as well. And the OST as well.
But this movie is like.. horrible. My personal rating is 3/10. Why?
The whole plot isn't only extremely shortened - it feels like they just cut some parts together that are important in themselves, yes, but there are parts missing that explain why in the world the things happen. Plus, I've been complaining about the missing balance between the IRIS political story and the annoying love story in the drama before but in this one they just left out things that are important to understand what IRIS actually wants and why in the world the organisation exists. But they had to add a bunch of love scenes. That doesn't even make any sense!
People, I get they had to shorten the drama but it would've made more sense to leave out some unnecessary lovey-dovey stuff and to add the important facts..

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.