#yang se jong you absolute unit i love you

[nubreed73]

Lee Sunghoon crying hours

Did a Duel watch/rewatch with a friend over the last couple of weeks and we finished today and. God. It is still one of the most eviscerating experiences even an entire year after watching for the first time.

Lee Sunghoon is--no contest--the most tragic, beautiful mess of a man I have ever imprinted on and Lee Sungjoon is so best boy want to pinch his cheeks doing his best I could scream and Yang Sejong is an absolute master at his craft for delivering multiple stellar performances that you easily forget are from the same actor.

[just-some-other-reviews]

I never watched Saimdang, Ligth’s Diary (mostly because the story wasn’t really interesting me. I have nothing against it, it just doesn’t fit my tastes), but I’m actually a huge fan of Yang Se-Jong, since his appearance in Doctor Romantic, Teacher Kim and I got to admit that a part of myself is a fan of him (aside as from his talent considering he’s a rookie actor aged of 25 years and already managed to snatch a male lead role [By the way, it’s in Temperature of Love airing every Monday/Tuesday, please support him! o/ even though the quality of the drama is slowly degrading...]) is because he kind of reminds me of Yoo Si-Yoon when he smiles (I don’t know why, he just screams Yoo Si-Yoon when he smiles in my opinion).

Duel is a sci-fi crime thriller. Jang Deuk-Cheon is the chief of the crime unit. One day, his daughter gets kidnapped. He manages to make a composite sketch of the criminal. When he receives a call who asks him to deposit a ransom at a bus terminal, he stumbles on two men who looks exactly the same. One manages to get away, while the other is captured and brought to the police station. Even though his involvement in the kidnapping seems undeniable, Sung-Joon denies he has anything to do with such thing and, even, ignores who’s the man, even though he looks exactly the same, who kidnapped Jang Deuk-Cheon’s daughter and claims he has no memories of what happened. 

As always, I tried to put the less spoilers it was possible in the review, but some might have escaped me, so please stay careful as you read.

So, I don’t know what the trip nowadays with crime drama is, but, like Lookout, the main protagonist loses his child. It’s not that I don’t like such type of plot, but I often think it can easily fall into the stretched and overly dramatized, but maybe I’m just saying that because I don’t have children and don’t understand what it’s like (even though I’m pretty sure I grasped the concept with my cat because he’s my baby). So let’s now, get into the drama. I’ll be really honest with you, without summary the start of the story is a little bit confusing. At the same time, you shouldn’t spoil yourself because that would be dramatic. Also, the pace is a little hard to follow sometimes and messy. The episode generally starts with the end of the episode, so sometimes it’s like “what the fuck happened, am I watching the right episode?” The progression sometimes doesn’t really make sense (or just the story overall). There are some of the stories who have a lot of lengths. I felt like some things were stagnating and kind of dragging, especially with Soo-Yeon. I mean, that was so boring (even though it was kind of cute from time to time when she was interacting with Sung-Hoon). Since I passed everything negative, let’s get into the positive. As much as I seemed, above, to have been quite dissatisfied with this drama, I was totally hooked by it. I was on edge most of the time and was eager to know what would happen next. Even though sometimes the story made me slightly disconcerted, I adored the plot. I like sci-fi thrillers who include a lot of science (realistic or not) and that’s exactly what this drama is. To some extent, it looks a little bit overboard into the “fantastic” and “unreal”, but that’s the charm of this drama. It’s a fiction, you have to leave yourself be fooled by the universe and if you do that for this drama, you’ll find it good. Sure, if you don’t get into the plot, it’s going to be a long rid, but I’ll say, give it a try. The story also has some nice twists and isn’t that predictable (well, it’s predictable to an extent, but not too much). So let’s just this is a good drama plot-wise, but sometimes it’s a little bit weird.

For the characters, the most memorable ones are the “twins” (I’ll call them that, so I don’t spoil a thing for those who haven’t watched this drama). So let’s quickly set the “twins” into place. The one who is caught and remember nothing is Sung-Joon. He’s a bit weird and his progression is quite questionable. I wasn’t especially fond of him, but I have to consider him and his brother as a whole, so I still put him in the memorable characters. He’s a bit weak, but he’s not a bad character. He’s just average. Now, let’s talk about my baby, Sung-Hoon, the psycho. He’s the best character of the drama. He has really cute interactions with some characters. He’s attaching in a weird way (I love him so much, I wasn’t ready for what happens to him…) and his progression is absolutely awesome. He’s the most complex character and I was so glad he was in the drama because if he had been a little bit less developed, I think the experience would be less enjoyable. For the other characters, I don’t have much to say. There were a lot of really small characters and some were kind of useless. The few that were really important were the father, daughter, prosecutor, reporter and nurse, respectively Jang Deuk-Cheon, Jang Soo-Yeon, Choi Jo-Hye, Ryu Mi-Rae and whatever the heck is her name, I can’t remember it and can’t find it anywhere. Even though most of the characters listed above are important, they have really little development and their personalities are quite superficial. Deuk-Cheon got on my nerves from time to time because he was a bit too into it, but at the same time, I could understand such actions. Soo-Yeon was cute, but that was pretty much it. Choi Jo-Hye (the prosecutor) was so damn annoying and didn’t really make the drama progresses. She was always dragging everything and putting useless drama in episodes. Ryu Mi-Rae was probably the most interesting characters among those listed. Her development was small, I thought my ship from Doctor Romantic, Teacher Kim would finally sail, but her character was full of twists (well, the twists were a bit weird). Finally the nurse/doctor was probably the biggest drama maker, but she helped Sung-Hoon changes, so she was useful. If I had something to say to resume the characters of this drama, I would say that they are neither good nor bad and through them there isn’t a real morale that is passed.

I’ll conclude there, I feel as if I’m going to spoil if I continue writing. The plot would be worth, after all the ill words I had to say on this drama, a 8/10 because I feel generous and can’t bring myself to give it a lower grade. The characters would be a 3/5 mostly because of Sung-Hoon that is awesome. The tearjerker factor would be a 1/5.