This is going to be a weird post, I'll tell you that up front. After watching the romantic dramedy Crash Landing on You some years ago and seeing Kim Soo Hyun (one of the highest paid actors in Asia, aka the King of Endorsements) make a cameo with long hair and wearing a green track suit, in which he acted like someone mentally challenged, I never got that scene out of my head. Although I was pretty sure it was a cultural reference that flew right over my head, the casting was just bizarre. In the west it would be like having Chris Evans play the autistic character role in Rain Man.
Anyway, fast forward to this summer, when Viki.com added a film called Secretly Greatly that featured Kim Soo Hyn with long hair, wearing a green track suit and looking like a mentally challenged person again. I had to know what he was playing, so I watched the movie. And, well, I might be more confused than I was before I did.
The beginning of the movie starts like an over-the-top Asian comedy farce; Kim Soo Hyun plays Dong-go, a North Korean spy hiding in plain sight in South Korea as a mentally challenged young man who is abused by just about everyone in his life. He does this very well, considering it's Kim Soo Hyun doing it, although there were way too many unnecessary bits of grotesquerie involved in his depiction of the character. I'm sure this is related to the webtoon on which the movie was based.
Just as I was about to stop watching, the movie suddenly became very serious, Soo Hyun took off his shirt to show what has to be the best-developed torso in all of Asia, and the plot just goes out the window, sprouts wings and flies off to LaLaLand while the film seems to become an entirely different production. People start shooting at each other. Spy versus spy versus ideology versus why would you think that? overruns the story. The ending was completely unnecessary and so disappointing I want to assure you that you'll be better off not watching it. Yet this movie broke box office records in South Korea.
I think my situation is the same as if a South Korean tried to understand the American Civil War without any explanations. I also don't get why the movie is so bipolar. I certainly don't understand why all the North Korean spies are suddenly classified as traitors and ordered to kill themselves. And the last scene was just ugly and pointless. So there you go; I can't recommend this one at all, and actually I'll warn you to stay away from it.
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