Unoriginal, annoying MC

First couple of episodes were rather strong.
Then it devolved into unoriginality. All tropes of the genre are here.

Bad guys turning on each other. Bad guys using bigger crime to cover smaller one. Mc pushed into corner by bad guys, it backfires. Mcs never compromising on their ideals, winning through deus ex machina. Ex husband saves the day. Hidden recording ex machina. Hiding evidence for own crimes instead of destroying it, it backfires. Bad guys can kill everyone except the mcs. Threatening wealthy officials always works (when it's done by good guys, bad guys need to bribe them). Good guys win and take responsibility for smallest crimes, bad guys are ruined, justice wins blah blah.

All of that is rather digestible, if you like this kinda storylines. But the character of the mc, Hawng Do Hee, is insufferable. Her motivation makes no sense, she was doing dirty work for corp for a decade, yet sudden suicide of one of the workers sents her rebelling and crying her eyes out. Then eventually winning through a combination of plot convenience, deus ex machina and plot induced stupidity (she's quite dull, although narrative paints her as brilliant).
And gosh, she cries a lot. When she isn't being cocky or laughing like an old witch, she's either crying on on the verge of crying.

She also look 20 years older then her character is supposed to be, really funny when matriarch of chaebol calls her an adoptive daughter when they look the same age.

If this was the story about a corrupt fixer fixing rich people's fuck up, it would have been better. If this was a story about Oh Kyong Sook's inspiring rise to power from activist, it would have been better(her character was far more likeable). But with narrative focusing on Hwang Do Hee so hard, I found it really hard to enjoy this one.

On the side note, all villains were well acted and decently written, so it was a shame to see them lose. Especially Kim Se Byeok as Eun Chae Ryung(the inheritor daughter of chaebol) and Seo Yi Sook as Son Yong Shim (the matriarch).

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Wasted potential

What not to expect:
-lotsa action and monster hunting
-revenge story

What to expect:
-Slice of life filler
-Monster of the week filler
-Endless flashback filler, sometimes repeating the same flashbacks or parts of earlier episodes
-Plotholes
-Plastic romance between a woman who can't act and a man who looks 15 years older than her(actually 600)
-Characters making dumb choices then crying about it
-A villain who keeps toying with the mc instead of winning when he had the advantage
-A big reveal, hyped up for 15 episodes, accounting to silly little nothing
-Mc who keeps brooding and reminiscing all the time, even when the situation is urgent
-Awesome music and insert songs
-Good CGI with overused stock groaning sound effect
-Actually good action scenes, too bad they are so few
-Melancholy and melodrama
-Poorly written ending that makes no sense lorewise

Overall, a show with a great premise and a good first episode that was brought down by poor writing and was far too long for its own good. The story could have been told in 4 episodes, didn't need 16.

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Trainwreck

The solution to trolley problem, according to this drama, is a trainwreck.
Don't chose between few and many, just pile them up on top of each other and sabotage the wheels too so the trolley falls over too after running over everyone else.
And true to that notion, the final episodes are absolute trash.

Not that the first 3/4 or so were so great, either. It was an extremely slow melodrama, with awfully dumb and naive FL who was not at all sympathetic even tho the story did everything to paint her as such. Truly the slowest story progression I've ever seen. And if only the plot reveals were worth it! But no, it jumped from one lackluster reveal to another, in between constant flashbacks to shit we've already seen and prolonged scenes like FL taking a whole minute to decide to answer a phone call or not EACH AND EVERY TIME.

But the absolute garbage the story turned in the end is second to none.
The morals are very sus too ,"sympathize with rapist if he committed suicide" and "tell on your own family if they broke the law" aren't things I can agree with.

Not even superb acting from almost everyone involved, especially Park Hee Soon and Kim Mu Yeol, could save this one. The camera work, scenery and soundtrack were wasted too (not that the ost is that strong anyway, it had like one memorable melody it kept overusing). Don't let anyone fool you by saying this is a mature drama for mature people, it's trash. It's also not makjang, it's not a thriller, nor is it similar to some other titles MDL recommends below, it's no Misty.

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Big Mouse

MDL be like:

-Get a drama with dumb writing, black and white characters, overpowered gary stu protag who has titanium plot armor, and an ending where all bad guys are punished regardless of their crimes and ml and fl live happy ever after: FUCKING MASTERPIECE SLAY GIRL!!!!!11

-Get a drama with clever writing, multidimensional characters, where protagonist struggles all the time to get what they want, and the ending is unhappy or bittersweet: REEEEEEEeeeeee *hellish screeching*

It so happens that Big Mouth (should be Big Mouse) is in this second category, and this explains any complaint or bad review you might have read of it. Really it's just MDL idiocy, the drama is great.

The only faults I could find are:
-The last episode felt rushed
-The ML can't act and was clearly chosen just for his looks. But it actually works in his favor here, somewhat, considering what kinda character he plays.

Extra credit to all the humorous and unintentionally humorous scenes that you might not expect from this kind of story and to acting of Yang Kyung Won who just dominated every scene he appeared in.

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Fun action movie

You know, I approached this movie with zero expectation.
Top review on this site is just 6/10.
It's a movie based on video game that I never even heard about.
Wuxia so probably full of tropes and archetypes.
A Chinese production, so the cinematography and CGI will probably suck....

Frankly speaking, I only hoped for some cool fight scenes to watch in between more serious things.

But boy. Did this film deliver!

The CGI was good and the direction was quite professional. The quality of the movie isn't different from big American productions, it was really quite a surprise!
The characters, tho rather archetypical, were all likable and well developed.....as far as you can develop characters in a single 90-minute long film. It's a job well done.

And the fight choreography was nice too.

Really, the only point this movie seems to be lacking is the storyline. And it's still quite good...especially since I expected a total trainwreck. It really only drops the ball in the second half, I think it was rushed. The movie could have used additional 20 minutes of screentime to flesh the events out! Also, I think the entire subplot with mc's origin was....totally unneeded and didn't account for anything(other than making ground for a possible sequel).

So as a movie. It was good and I had a lot of fun. As a video game commercial? Didn't tell me anything about the game, and probably didn't even try. It's fine. As a Chinese production? Job well done!

I recommend it.

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The emperor is naked

All the reviews praised this drama as 10/10 best thing ever, and with netflix taking it down in a couple of weeks, "Healer" arose interest from fans both old and new.

But is it worth the hype? Well, after seeing 5 episodes, I'm afraid to say....no, not really.

But first thing first. I realize I'm not a target audience. I expected a thriller with some love story, but instead I got love story with lots of melodrama and some thriller. Very little action.

The mc is batman-like hypercompetent gary stu, supported by super-hacker who can just hack anything in 3 seconds if she just looks at it through mc's magic super high tech glasses. No one must know his identity, which doesn't stop him from enlisting at news agency where he pretends to be a clumsy, stuttering dumbass in character development as old as Clark Kent.

There he falls in love with a girl he was originally paid to stalk. However, little does he know they are actually amnesiac childhood friends with childhood promise, and every single villain and side character they will encounter from now on is somehow connected to their past!

Oh did I mention that the first time they met in person the bus they were driving stopped too fast, and the female mc conveniently fell in Healer's embrace? Perhaps I also should mention that he's so hyper-competent at combat he can defeat multiple armed thugs at once, and parkour fast enough to catch up with a car. Oh, and of course, everyone takes notice of how handsome he is....

In other words, the story is full of tropes and cliches. It's fairly well-executed, as far as acting and production values and direction are concerned, at least based on these 5 episodes I've seen so far. But it's just....boring and predictable.

The FL is pretty cute, but so far, she's just been a clueless damsel in distress. Any sign of competence shown in the first episode went poof, she can't even notice she's being stalked by multiple people at the time.

And don't get me started on melodrama. I had to turn episode 5 off when FL's wheelchair-bound mother got the worst acted epilepsy attack I've seen in years just when the name of her amnesiac missing daughter was mentioned.

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Idiocy

What a feast! Let's see....

-A magic melee stun gun more potent then any taser ever dreamt to be, you can touch anyone through thick jacket for a couple of seconds, it makes bzz sound and they drop down lmao
-Miracle telescopic baton that can one shot guys
-If you think mc taking 10 guys alone in the first episode is over the top, wait until you see two male leads taking 30 guys armed with baseball bats a couple of episodes later!
-Car chase where smaller car somehow topples a bigger van, and then they get out of the car and run towards the other car with heavy load of gold, while the other car is just calmly waiting there instead of driving up and picking them up.
-Police is nowhere while all of that happens
-Nobody uses guns, not even gangsters
-Similarly, nobody uses katanas, machetes or other melee weapon available on the market. A rare character is smart enough to use a kitchen knife, but of course kitchen knife is useless against the power of boxing.
-The thugs use these shitty hollow aluminum bats instead of normal wooden ones or wooden kendo swords. Of course when they hit our characters it makes a bonk noise and nothing happens, our heroes are too high level for this shit. But of course if they pick up a hollow aluminum baseball bat, the thugs are screwed!
-Useless ML with his useless crying mother, really, entire story wouldn't have happened if she read what she signs.
-Useless FL who's trying to be smart but forgot she's an idiot.
-Pretty cool second ML who has no stakes in any of that and I have no idea why he's hanging out with these losers.
-Antagonist casino plan is fucking idiotic but in a universe where taking loans on stolen ID cards of homeless people is a viable scheme it might just work.
-People get beaten and cut pretty deep in the face but are perfectly fine the next day, no nerves or anything damaged.

Even though I'm only 4 episodes in I can see it's a proper shitpost of a drama, can't wait for what dumb shit will happen in the second half.

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