2009/KBS Before I start off, it should be clear that this review is a bit different from the previous ones. I take a more critical position and compare this series to its international equivalents. The reasons behind this different approach are its large budget (?20 billion), the high ratings it received but most importantly its emulation of American TV series such as 24, the Bourne film series but also the British espionage tv drama Spooks. With these circumstances, I believe it is justified to hold IRIS to different standards than the previous kdrama's that I've reviewed and posted here prior. With that out of the way, let's start with the positive. When you watch your ordinary Korean drama and then see IRIS, it is a spectacular and refreshing series. It features romantic elements, yet stays clear of aegyo and "oppa!", which when used properly can be entertaining, yet in all honesty get rather annoying after a while. IRIS doesn't suffer from this, nor does it put so much emphasis on South Korea's culture of excessive virtue when it comes to relationships as pretty much all the other rated-15 dramas do (in contrast to many of its excellent films). It is after all an espionage drama, but its worth noting at least that they didn't use the exact same approach as every other drama does. It does remain a proper Korean drama of course, with its well timed episode endings, the slick looking cast and good soundtrack. Especially industry veteran Baek Ji Young's song Don't Forget is great at evoking emotions from the viewer in the romantic parts. I also liked Shin Seung Hun's Love of Iris and I'm quite sure the people over at /r/kpop will be pleased whenever the music from Big Bang plays (not my particular interest, so I won't touch on that). The cast is in my opinion a bit of a mixed bunch, when looking at the quality of their performances. Main lead Lee Byung-Hun delivers a good and solid performance, no complaints there. However, female lead Kim Tae-Hee, while extraordinarily beautiful in IRIS, does not perform with conviction. I can't really judge if she's even capable of doing so, as I've only seen her in My Princess so far. I am not too familiar with the works of Jeong Jun-Ho, I'll have to put some work into watching the films in which he features, but he didn't impress me too much. This could partly be blamed on his character, I'm not too sure on that. The 'North Koreans' played by veterans Kim Seung-Woo and Kim So-Yeon do perform excellent and both got their deserved screen time, though in my opinion not enough depth of character and background. The supporting cast is nothing to be impressed about. Comedic relief and every-other-drama/film supporting actor [Yun Ju-Sang](Yun Ju-Sang) as the eccentric scientist just isn't funny or witty and thus missed his goal of adding some lighthearted amusement. It just doesn't work out, just as Lee Jeong-Kil is just another president act, Juni needs some more experience and T.O.P. should just stick to singing and making music. I also am starting to wonder if they even hold auditions for the foreign actors (Japanese cast excluded) that appear in Korean dramas. Do they just invite some friends, business partners or random people from the street? There's little acting going on as soon as you hear English being spoken. IRIS is not alone in this. Moving on to the production, something that really sets this drama apart from others. On one hand, it can be considered a big step for Korean drama, but for some reason there is no attention to detail. Too much time and money is wasted on exotic locations, but on our NSS computer systems, they'd still make bad use of English (AGREEMENT when it should have said MATCH, or simply spelling errors), I spotted a previous attempt at a car spin on one of the roads and it appears that no one was concerned with how weapons and firefights actually work in reality. While seemingly having so much in common with the Bourne films, no attention was paid to the chase scenes (Let's face it, those are hard to miss in any Bourne film, for shame. Pay attention to detail in the future, Korean drama creators, because this is embarrassing. While we're at the embarrassments anyway, the story and script is what pull this drama down to a level that it could have stayed above. Nuclear bombs? Biological weapons? Super evil groups with roots everywhere? Come on, this is about as cheesy and predictable as it gets. No points for any originality there, nor does the rest of the story offer any interesting insights. The creators are careful not to let realism get in the way of how this story progresses. They may not have heard of the British drama Spooks, but it is obvious that they should have and watched it intently too. This will not help the Hallyu wave spread beyond East and South East Asia, it is simply not up to par with what other countries have to offer. It could perhaps serve as a stepping stone for future productions, but with domestic ratings this high I doubt they would bother. For a Korean drama, this is special and perhaps even better than City Hunter. However, IRIS is simply not up to emulating this concept in the same fashion that Western equivalents are able to do this. Where as in My Girlfriend is an Agent, the humor helped to keep it watchable, no such help is available for IRIS. 6/10 http://www.reddit.com/r/KDRAMA/comments/mdowp/iris????_2009kbs_cultural_flunkeyism_610/