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Tag: Red Swan

  • REVIEW: Big Stars and impressive budget propel ‘Red Swan’ through its hazy first two episodes

    REVIEW: Big Stars and impressive budget propel ‘Red Swan’ through its hazy first two episodes

    Two big stars – Kim Ha Neul and Jung Ji Hoon (more popularly known as Rain) – are some of the biggest and most established names in Korean entertainment. Working together is definitely big news, and you can see the Disney+ produced K-Drama has the budget to celebrate this artistic collaboration. ‘Red Swan,’ based on its first two episodes, is poised as an action/romance/thriller as Kim Ha Neul plays Oh Wan Soo, the wife of a chaebol heir whose high-profile global charities has put her in the crosshairs of terrorist groups. While on an important event in Manila, she is attacked and is rescued by a highly trained, former policeman, Seo Do Yoon (Jung Ji Hoon), who ends up joining her security detail. What complicates things is that it seems Do Yoon is following a trail of the murder of his friends which leads him straight into the chaebol family that Oh Wan Soo is married into. Adding fuel to the fire, Wan Soo has had it with her adulterous husband and may be attracted to her brand-new bodyguard.

    Review Red Swan Disney

    ‘Red Swan,’ written by Choi Yoon Jung and directed by Park Hong-kyun, is fast-paced and glitzy. It prefers to take short cuts in character building and development and is more intent in showing off its cast and its huge budget. It relies on archetypes and tropes to help set up the characters and their place in this world while impressing upon us the high stakes world of this reality. Oh Wan Soo is an impressive woman. Her foundation, The Now Foundation, has done what appears to be immeasurable good for the world. So much so, that she’s being targeted by Isis. She is unfazed, though, but what is more surprising is the way by which her husband’s family reacts. 

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    Her mother-in-law, as early as episode one, is already being poised to take the mantle of the drama’s main antagonist, or one of them, at the very least. She’s an abrasive woman who is fond of shouting and throwing things around. She’s the typical feisty, rich, and sinister mother-in-law who looks down on our protagonist and will definitely get in her way. Oh Wan Soo’s husband, Kim Yong-guk (Jung Gyu-Woon), doesn’t get to show much of any layers other than his dismissive affair that’s revealed by the second episode but there might be more to him than meets the eye.

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    The break-neck speed by which the story unfolds makes it difficult for the creative team to juggle its storylines. It awkwardly juggles between Oh Wan Soo and Seo Do Yoon, whose storylines begin very far away from each other that when the show jumps from one to the other, it doesn’t quite make sense. Do Yoon is in Manila trying to find clues to the murder of a friend, also from the police force. While searching for it in Manila, he comes across Oh Wan Soo as she is attacked in Makati and the story finally comes together.

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    There are a lot of issues plaguing the first two episodes of ‘Red Swan.’ The most apparent is the way by which it depicts Manila. Sure, the drone shots that establish location was taken in the city but it’s shots of a commercial space that is meant to be Makati looks either somewhere in McKinley Hill (not a place I’m familiar with) or a completely different location altogether. It doesn’t help that all the crowd extras are primarily white or East Asian looking. It doesn’t look or feel like Makati at all (though it is nice that we are depicted as such a clean, orderly place). The storyline feels rushed to try and set up this world early to try and get the two main characters together and to start the romantic storyline up and running but also amping up the feel of dread and danger. It’s quite a lot to handle and the direction and writing isn’t holding everything up in this regard.

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    Fortunately, the two lead stars are a completely arresting watch. Kim Ha Neul adds a certain dignity to Oh Wan Soo that makes her a fascinating character study. She’s tired of all the BS and it seems she’s lost all track of what is keeping her moving forward. When Seo Do Yoon comes into her life, she gazes into him trying to decode him and discover what he is about. It’s that look that brings about the passion in this show. Jung Ji Hoon has a gait and a posture of a leading man. He has such a strong presence that even if the scenes play out so typically like any action series I’ve seen before, his swagger hits differently that it doesn’t get boring.

    Hopefully, after all the stumbling around and trying to put all the story elements into place, the show will pick up and find its rhythm and pace because its stars can’t carry the whole show solely on their shoulders for the rest of the eight episodes to follow.

    My Rating:

    stars 2 5




    Red Swan is now streaming on Disney+. Watch it here.

  • Superstars Rain and Kim Ha Neul Talk About Their New Drama ‘Red Swan’ on Disney+

    Superstars Rain and Kim Ha Neul Talk About Their New Drama ‘Red Swan’ on Disney+

    Last July 2, the cast and director of the new K-Drama produced by Disney+ ‘Red Swan’ held a press conference on the day before the first episode was released on the streaming platform. ClickTheCity was invited to watch as the cast – which includes Korean superstars Kim Ha Neul and Jung Ji-Hoon (better known as Rain) as well as Jung Gyu-woon, Seo Yi Sook, and Ki Eun Se – talked about the show and showed off their vibrant personalities.

    The drama promises to be an action-packed suspense thriller with a very healthy dose of romance. Kim Ha Neul stars as Oh Wan Soo, a former world champion professional golfer who marries into a chaebol family and becomes a UN Goodwill Ambassador whose work threatens terrorist organizations and has her at their crosshairs. Jung Ji-Hoon plays a former policeman who becomes Wan Soo’s bodyguard, but he has an agenda of his own. From the first two episodes, while Wan Soo faces a threat from the outside, her biggest threat may come from her husband’s mother (Seo Yi Sook).

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    Photo courtesy of Disney+

    Like any press conference, the moderator invites each of the cast to come up on stage for photos and then asked the two leads, Kim Ha Neul and Jung Ji-Hoon to pose together. Immediately, you can see their chemistry playing off of each other when the moderator asks them to pose as their characters, and Rain immediately imitates a security detail, complete with gesturing towards his ear as if he was wearing an earpiece. The two laugh at the gesture but are able to get serious enough for one good shot.

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    From the get-go, you can see how comfortable they are with each other which plays off well onscreen as the passion between the two characters are already evident as early as episode one.

    On the flipside, when Seo Yi Sook joins the two on stage, they were asked to make “fatal pose” and Rain opens his arms for a hug to Seo Yi Sook, who also laughs. The irony is at play here as it seems that Seo Yi Sook may play the main villain.

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    Photo courtesy of Disney+

    When it was time to answer questions from the press, the cast was joined by Park Hong-kyun. The first question was directed to the leads, and they were asked why they accepted to do ‘Red Swan.’ Kim Ha Neul opened up about how she had loved ‘The Bodyguard’ with Kevin Costner and Whitney Houston so it was a chance to do her own version. But what really gripped her was how strong the script was. For Jung Ji Hoon, he had always wanted to work with director Park Hong Kyun and every time a project would surface, something always came up and the project never pushed through. So when this show was offered to him, he said yes immediately.

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    Director Park Hong Kyun is known for his action-packed style of directing and had always wanted to work with Rain in an action-led series. He knew what Rain could do as an action star and was very happy that Rain was always giving a lot of ideas in how to do certain action scenes. The two seemed like willing collaborators to make the show more thrilling. It also gives a glimpse of Rain’s experience and creative side. Jung Ji-Hoon is a very physical actor and likes to do his own stunts. “I like to be responsible for my action sequences,” he said. What shocked Park Hong Kyun, though, was Jung Ji-Hoon’s emotional strength. He was the last person cast for the drama and he was chosen because of his experience in action but his vulnerability became the show’s hidden strength.

    Red Swan Disney
    Source: Disney+ FB

    “My character doesn’t have a lot of lines,” Jung Ji-Hoon said. “So, I have to work a lot with just how I look and I have to act with only my eyes.” Park Hong Kyun was amazed and was not expecting this side of Jung Ji-Hoon’s range as an actor. He also shared that Rain had worked closely with their consultant on how to properly project and come off like a real bodyguard and Rain said that part of it was having to speak with a “cool tone,” which he had observed from his research. The moderator then asked him if he could try speaking with his modulated voice and the actor asked for a moment and he fixed his posture and then, with a totally new tone of voice asked the audience to please support the drama.

    For Kim Ha Neul, she watched a lot of Goodwill Ambassadors and tried to capture their grace and poise. And while she golfs in her leisure time, she had to really train hard as her character “was the best in the world” and she knew she couldn’t just fake it. For Jung Gyu-woon, who plays the husband of Kim Ha Neul, he wanted to steer away from a stereotypical chaebol heir. While his character is problematic, he pushed for the character to be truly in love with Oh Wan Soo so that there would be a tortured nuance to the character. “He’s a complex character,” he said, “And I want to show him struggling that his wife, which he loves so much, has so much friction with his mother.”

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    Photo courtesy of Disney+

    On the other hand, Ki Eun Se sees her character as a sort of comic relief. From the first two episodes, she comes off as a family friend, sometimes a nanny to On Wan Soo’s child but she has her own agenda and it’s to take Jung Gyu-woon for her own. “Her story is the one that breaks all the tension,” she says, laughing. 

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    With the many genres that are playing out in ‘Red Swan,’ the two leads were asked what approached did they focus on the most and while Kim Ha Neul felt that her character was more focused on the threats to her life, that as an actress, she focused on the mystery and the intrigue – the suspense genre that pushes the show’s plot forward – but for Rain, he felt that he wanted to focus more on the romance aspect of the story. Because he wanted to put the relationship of Oh Wan Soo and her bodyguard at the center, he opted to say the lines as written and to avoid from doing improvisations to help Kim Ha Neul work with him for their passionate scenes.With the show’s pedigree of great talent involved and the sort of camaraderie that they projected during this press conference; ‘Red Swan’ may be a show to watch out for on Disney+.