Review: Secretly Greatly

Expectation: I'm not the biggest anticipator of the movie but upon hearing so many good reviews about it; this film starring Kim Soo Hyun has built my confidence in watching. Basically, I expected it to be awesome, thus; they have a huge responsibility to fulfill at least to me as a viewer.

In a nutshell: It's about a North Korean soldier, Won Ryu Han (Kim Soo Hyun) who was sent to South Korea to be a spy in disguise of an idiot (Dong Gu). Together with him are his comrades, Lee Hae Rang (Park Ki Woong) and Ri Hae Jin (LeeHyun Woo) who were sent later to prove their nationalistic attribute as soldiers.

Commentaries: The beginning of the movie was really interesting and that immediately drew me into watching. But then, I realized that I need to look through the movie as a whole because in totality, we need to grasp the essence of its details. So starting with the aim or objective of it, I think that this entails a very thorough reasoning as to why they want to create a story in a way that the soldiers' dignity as people are involved. Through that, we will understand better the core of their character that we have laid eyes on. For me, in the aspect of bringing things into light for the characters, they sort of lacked in it. To explain myself, for this kind of movie which I anticipated, I wanted to see how much the soldiers are motivated to execute the intructions to them in the story like for example, what is worth fighting for aside from your country's pride? Furthermore, I expected lesser contradicting events than they actually have. Well, it saddened me a bit because I lived up to a more polished writing than they delivered. Regardless of that, I think that they can do more than what they have shown so for a film that hit the box office, I wanted more depth. I knew that love for country is a kind of feeling that is significant for a soldier but why do the story has to send traitors to persecute their own men? I thought that it was a bit off as a patriot.

Next are the actors, well, what do we have to expect from Kim Soo Hyun? I've always been a fan of this guy since I've seen him act as the King in The Moon That Embraces the Sun and I believe that everyone in Korea loves him as much which is fairly the reason of his success in the big screen. The talent is there, the character of Bong Gu was played well and I can't comment anything that disappointed me about his acting. He's really one of the most expressive young actors we have so he's such a treasure in the industry of film making as well as in dramas. Moreover, if you want to see his six pack abs, I don't know if they were real though, you'd have a dose of it in this film. Off to Lee Hyun Woo, to be honest this is the first work of his that I have seen, except for the glimpse I've seen in him in To The Beautiful You and so far as I have witnessed, this guy has left me a good impression, a long lasting one if I may consider. Meanwhile Park Ki Woong, I've seen him in Chuno who portrayed a bandit slash a traitor slash a guard of a noble man, thus I have already seen a taste of his acting skills prior to this. So I may say that he's as effective as I've seen him the first time around.

Finally, the last but not the least is the production team, particularly the editing department. Well, nothing extravagant nor critique worthy to say but yeah, it was just average to my liking. I appreciated their hard work though because I'd have to admit that people actually bought tickets for the movie to reach number 1 in the box office. If I won't acknowledge that for the sake of agreeing at least to everyone who became happy upon seeing this film, I would really feel bad about myself. Besides, I thought I needed to enjoy it in the same process as everybody did. But nope, I won't change my opinion just because I want to disregard everyone but because I believe that they could have done a better job than they did.

Grade: B - Above Average

Not bad at all. I mean I would still recommend it and leave it up to everyone's judgment but for me I'd want to leave it this way.