A Top List of Lee Dong Wook Dramas and Movies

The drama that pretty much set in stone the fact I'd fall in love with Lee Dong Wook's characters no matter who they are.  Taejo can't be anymore different than GongChan from My Girl, but he's got the sort of smug and charisma that nobody can ever hate. Very good chemistry with his female partner and a great story progression, always kept me on edge and reawakened my Law and Order-loving soul with a bunch of "partner" related drama. 

I don't know why I never checked other dramas by the Hong sisters after the heartwarming masterpiece that is "You're beautiful" (I know it came later but I watched it first because of Hongki, don't judge me). This didn't disappoint in the least, it was sweet, heartwarming, great acting, incredibly funny.  Witnessed Lee Joongi's emo bad boy phase, 100% would watch again. 

I'm going to be honest, i'm nothing but biased towards this drama. It's seriously a hate it or love it type of situation, the story isn't particularly original (especially if you're a manga/manhua fan too) and the characters aren't particularly complex safe for one exception, which isn't LDW's character, Yeon, funnily enough, it's his brother, Lee Rang, played by Kim Bum. Yeon is fine, LDW's acting is good as you'd expect, I think his female partner was a nice choice too albeit maybe sometimes too plastic, but it can go, the story was, as I said, not very original but certain directions and well-executed story beats made it refreshing and enjoyable, the supernatural aspect of it was quite nice too, Imoogi, the villain wasn't very compelling but he could manage to be intimidating at times. Overall I consider it a good watch, especially if you like supernatural elements, but I admit the rating is only that high because I am biased for these type of stories and I thought that most of it was quite enjoyable. 

What I personally can say about it is just that I went in for LDW/Yeon and came out trash for Lee Rang/Kim Bum. It's still a victory!   

Initially it was a bit lower, because I think the drama dragged for 3 episodes too many, especially around episode 10-13, but the chemistry between the main protagonists is amazing and I enjoyed it for the rest overall, tried to be quite subversive without falling in too many of the rich chaebol/poor girl cliches, though I think the second female male lead ended up being pointless and the ending rushed. Watching this drama feels as good as it feels bitter, wouldn't go into it without being aware it might make your heart ache a lot. Cancer isn't to be treated lightly, but the drama did a good job.

The first and only historical drama Lee Dong Wook acted in. Can't lie, the first episode doesn't do the rest of the series justice. It appears awfully overly-dramatical, also thanks to the editing and dramatical zoom-ins. The issue with it is that while I managed to get used to it, sometimes certain scenes looked funnier than intended, which drew me back from what was happening. 

However, besides that, it's a pretty solid drama and it makes me sad that it's so underrated. Coming out in 2013 was probably a disadvantage as that year had a lot of popular dramas, so people might have more easily skipped this one. Again, a shame, since personally I liked this more than what tended to be popular (of course, from what I watched). It's built well, characters are consistent, plot points aren't forgotten, they're actually brought back and built upon, none of the new elements seemed brought out of the blue since everything had a justifiable explanation. Some things were maybe convenient, some characters jumped from one location to the other too easily/too fast, but nothing that could destroy my enjoyment of this drama.

The only reason I'm not giving this a higher rating is because I did feel sometimes like it was dragging, even though it was all justified, I felt like the drama was supposed to end in 3 different points and having the end delayed didn't feel very fun to me, but it's entirely subjective, I don't think there's anything specifically wrong with what it did. Maybe the ending was even a bit TOO beautiful seeing how much shit the characters had to endure, but, as said, it isn't enough to consider them real flaws in my perspective.

I have a love hate relationship with this drama. Could have been brilliant but I just thought it tried too much to obtain a reaction than focusing on doing the plot right. Too many questions, too much ignorance regarding psychology and psychiatry (I'm a Social and Formation studies graduate, couldn't close my eyes on psychological inaccuracies since) even if it got some literary research done such as Metamorphosis and Sartre's "Hell are other people" quote with an interesting way of putting them into practice and showcasing the themes of the story. This is hands down  one of Lee Dong Wook's best performances, the one that made me fall in love with the actor, and I don't think much can top it. The drama also manages to be highly entertaining if you take it as pure fiction without expecting it to be realistic and one of the reasons for this, and some might hate me for this, is....Jungwoo/Moonjo OTP!! I said what I said! More seriously though, it weren't for the dynamic between these two the drama would have been worthless to me. It has a very Batman vs Joker feel, trying to make a point, dragging the other into madness. Just endearing.

I expected more. It's definitely in the better part of the sphere of LDW's works (even if he's in it for less than 10 minutes) but the movie presents an interesting unrealistic concept that ends up in a bland, unrealistic way. It's nice that the overall message is love wins it all and at the end of the day what is inside matters, but realistically speaking it would still be difficult being with a man that changes face, age, gender, ethnicity everytime he wakes up. There are several implications of that that were just shrugged and I expected a story about identity confusion rather than a love story, but it's good. I don't regret watching it all, it's just a waste of potential. 

If I had to describe this movie it'd be...intriguing. It's not very involving and nothing really happens, yet the search for this mysterious girl that cooked this amazing stew still kept me intrigued till the end, even if at the end of the day you can say besides hard work the secret ingredient was basically MSG? XD

 Thinking about it, it's a really average story conveyed through the eye of a third person like some sort of documentary, but something about it was magical.

In short, this drama is TEDIOUS with capital T. I really enjoyed it for like the first 15 or so episodes, but then it just started to turn dull and repetitive. Characters making the same mistakes, characters not talking, overly-wallowing in self-pity and angst (I'm not experienced in melodramas, are they all this constantly overdramatic?) 

However Lee Dong Wook and Lee Da Hae always had good chemistry together already from My Girl and I was excited to see them back together for this drama. While they didn't even go near being as charming as in My Girl, they still got a pretty solid and involving romance...at least until they stop talking to eachother and make dumb mistakes resulting in too many ups and downs, too many get togethers and break-ups, too many "Omg i love you so much I could die D8" and "NO! *looks away dramatically* I CAN'T BE WITH YOU BECAUSE YOU'LL END UP BEING HURT!" which can be sweet but it's one of the main reason why the drama became a chore for me because they just kept doing it!

There were also a lot of "empty" episodes after like episode 12 where not much really happened and it just felt like trying to drag on the melodrama for way too long to be necessary. It's a popular opinion, but this drama definitely didn't need 32 episodes. They could have stopped already around 16. 20 episodes if I want to be generous. It overstayed its welcome for 12 episodes too long. It's a shame really because LDW always tends to choose plots with intricate and complex concepts and ideas (fitting of the specific genre of course) and he acted his best, but of course he can't control the delivery and execution of it which is what I mainly got an issue with here. 

It's pretty standard. Happy that LDW and Eugene acted together again after Loving you, but I felt like it was a somewhat unfinished story.

Unfortunately dropped after 5 episodes. The thing with this drama is that after 5 episodes I still had no idea where it was trying to go. Also main girl, while at first impressed me for being a black belt judo fighter AND a bodyguard, quickly disappointed me with how dumb and prejudiced she is. She got the logic and interpersonal relationships experience of a grade schooler and I don't see how that is cute. Park Mu Yeol on the other hand (LDW's character) still reflects the characters LDW has been doing generally untill 2012 (with some exceptions ofc), The guy that seems cold (sometimes of an asshole) with a very soft actual inner self. And I'm fine with that. He's still cute. The comedy sorta ruins both the characters and the chemistry though. it's too over the top, it's too random, it's even almost used sometimes as a plot device to draw back the plot which tbh just showcases the characters (especially main girl) as dumb and childish. I am not sure if it was supposed to be quirky, it just comes across as annoying. I still don't know how she managed to catch feelings for him in episode 5 either. It's like the writers decided it was time to move stuff along between them so just woke up, wrote the script on the spot and went with it.

Maybe i'll get back to this drama one day but right now: a mixed pass.

Just ...why? That's everything I wanna ask this drama. The concept is great, especially nowadays in 2019-2020 when it's all about superhero movies, but the thing is the drama doesn't seem very interested on delivering on the whole Blade Man concept. It feels more interested in LDW's character's obsession with this one girl and his relationship with his son. Which is fine, i mean, he got anger management issues and it could be interesting how he'd learn to deal with it, but the drama just doesn't seem like wanting to go anywhere with that. You could say the 6th episode (where I dropped it) is early to get anything going, but at the same time i just felt like watching a whole different drama than the one I was promised and it wasn't even that good at it when it unfortunately just turns out to seem really cringy x'D

I don't really know what this tried to do. I ended up dropping it after 5 or so episodes and if I pushed myself that much was because Lee Dong Wook was trying something different and he was doing well at it. I just thought the main girl had no chemistry with him all in all and the drama was too vague with people throwing one liners and never actually giving a straight answer. 

Pretty much cringe. The idea was interesting but I don't think a comedy was the right way to convey it, it just seems like it didn't know what it wanted to be. Everything about it is cringe and it really didn't age well, from acting to editing, even the main female protagonist was quite painfully annoying, quirky, but annoying.

It's my first drama from 2002 and oh boy, kdramas REALLY improved so much in 3 years, seeing how My Girl came out in 2005. This just REALLY didn't age well, everything about it was cringy even if I tried my best to understand the style and production of that time. It does offer a refreshing ending though and LDW was adorable