My Name (2021) Netflix - Korean Action Crime

[laagi]

Another korean series courtesy of Netflix. This time around focusing on the action crime genre. Which let's admit it, korea has brought us some of the best to date!

My Name might have not garnered as much attention as Squid Game. Maybe even went a bit under with all the hype for the latter.

However we're presented here with a very solid 8 episodes series of action and drama.

Yoon Ji Woo (Han So Hee) is witness to the brutal murder of her father Yoon Dong Hoon (Yoon Kyung Ho). With the help of her father's former boss and friend Choi Mu Jin (Park Hee Soon), Ji Woo tries to uncover the truth behind her father's murder and ultimately have her revenge.

There's a lot of familiar faces in this series. So it doesn't come as a surprise that for the most part the performances are outstanding. The same goes for the over all quality of the production. Everything looks and feels more like a movie rather than a TV series. Although at times it does show that it's "only" made for TV or in this case streaming.

The action as one would expect is well done and very violent! Lots of knife fights... which almost always ends up in a bloody mess. Also a big compliment to the actors for doing most of their own stunts. I can only imagine how much time they've spent with training and rehearsal. However, if you're a bit familar with korean cinema, you've probably seen it all before. So don't go expecting something "fresh" here.

My biggest issue is the story. It's very predictable and generic. Think "The Villainess" meets "Infernal Affairs" just a light version of it. In the beginning as well as towards the end it feels rushed. One and a half episodes in they literally skip 5 years of the story in the easiest way possible; a montage. Which is a shame as it would've been essential for the motivation and progress of Ji Woo. Towards the end Ji Woo also makes increasingly terrible decisions which only result in more (intentional) tragedy rather than anything else. Not to mention that her character is very naive as she never seems to question anything and puts her own revenge above everything else.

I think the series would've benefited from an additional 4 episodes just to give it more breathing space. Or cut down the whole thing into a 2 hour movie. Either way for what it's worth, it makes for an overall entertaining watch. At least the ending ties up all loose ends. Although I'm sure if proven successful we'll probably see a second season. I'd be interested to see a prequel focusing on Yoon Dong Hoon and Choi Mu Jin's story.

@One Armed Boxer as a fellow korean cinema enthusiast I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on this

Edited October 29, 2021 by laagi

[thekfc]

I started giving it a watch (1 1/2 episodes in) but had to stop/switch as the wife wanted to watch Army of Thieves. 

I am working this weekend and will not get to continue watching until next week.

[laagi]

17 hours ago, thekfc said:

I started giving it a watch (1 1/2 episodes in) but had to stop/switch as the wife wanted to watch Army of Thieves. 

I am working this weekend and will not get to continue watching until next week.

[One Armed Boxer]

On 10/29/2021 at 11:23 PM, laagi said:

@One Armed Boxer as a fellow korean cinema enthusiast I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on this

I wrapped up watching it tonight! I concur with your opinions laagi, I guess the best way to put it would be if 'Squid Game' introduced audiences to the whole early 2000's 'Asia Extreme' genre, then 'My Name' is there to introduce audiences to the Korean revenge genre.

I'm one of those people who tend to only watch movies and avoid series purely because of the time investment. Watch a movie and even if it sucks, you only lose 2 hours, if I decide to review it then probably 4 max. However for a series you usually need to invest upwards of 8 hours, and in the case of most Netflix shows I find I've forgotten almost everything about them a couple of weeks after watching (although that could also be because I'm old).

I bring this up because for me the likes of both 'My Name' and 'Squid Game' would work far better as 2 hour movies rather than the total 7 - 8 hours they run for if you were to binge them. In a movie you get more impact, have to be more creative with the time limit, and probably come with a higher budget as well. Did 'My Name' need to be 8 episodes? Not really, 'The Merciless' tells a thematically similar tale and does it at just under 2 hours.

The other issue I have (apologies, this is turning into a rant), is that the length of the series essentially gives away the plot (although here it was fairly obvious anyway). It felt like a lot of time (well, it was a lot of time - 5 episodes!) was spent on a very 1-dimensional, cardboard cutout of a villain - the kind that's constantly manically grinning, shouting "shibal!" every few seconds, and needs to be wild eyed for the duration of any scene they're in. By episode 3 I was bored by the characters lack of depth, and frustrated that so much focus was given to him when it was obvious with 8 episodes he was never going to be the main villain.

On the plus side though the double whammy of Han So-hee and Park Hee-soon ('Revenger', 'The Witch: Part 1. The Subversion') deliver a stellar pair of leading performances, with So-hee in particular really going all out in the action scenes. There's the usual complaint of the empty handed choreography lacking power, however most of the time she has a knife in hand and uses it to bloody effect. As @Dredderick_Tatum pointed out in the Won Jin thread we also get a brief but welcome fight scene with the Scorpion King himself, showing he's still very much got the moves (useless trivia: this is the third time for Won Jin and Park Hee-soon to work together, as they were also both in 2019's 'The Battle: Roar to Victory' and 2013's 'The Suspect'). As an action driven series, there's little to complain about.

PS If you look up 'My Name' online a lot of the results will be about So-hee not being aware of there being a sex scene until they were mid-way through filming, which isn't entirely true - this article explains it the best and clears up any confusion.

PPS @laagi Did you check out 'Sweet Home'? It's the only other Korean series I've seen on Netflix, and thought it was pretty solid (and more importantly, original!).

[laagi]

Thank you @One Armed Boxer I thoroughly enjoyed reading your thoughts. I agree! same here I find series in general just to be a huge time consuming effort. Not to mention if it's a bad one it's basically a stinker for 8+hours. And as you said yourself a movie at least in the worst case only wastes 2 hours of our life. 

I felt a bit like this with my recent sitting through of The Veil. It wasn't all that bad but for at least half of the series it was just endless talks, twists and what not. Which was really disappoiniting as it started out rather promising.

I'm probably one of the few people who have yet to check out Squid Game. To be honest I don't plan to any time soon. I'm tempted to start watching Dr. Brain on Apple+ though. Also Hellbound is just around the corner on Netflix. Pretty sure now that audiences got a taste for korean productions we'll see a lot more in the near future specifically produced for the international market. I'm sure there's already enough K-Drama at home.

I haven't even heard yet of Sweet Home, but I'll put on my list. And thanks for pointing out about Won Jin I thought as much while watching it. Think he only appears briefly in the last epsiode when squaring off against Han So-hee. 

[One Armed Boxer]

1 hour ago, laagi said:

I agree! same here I find series in general just to be a huge time consuming effort.

Yep, I did attempt to watch 2018's 'Mr. Sunshine' since it starred one of my favourite actors, Lee Byung-hun.  I wasn't gripped after 30 minutes though so turned it off, since it's 24 episodes and each of them runs at over an hour. I admire people who say stuff like the series only found it's rhythm in the 3rd or 4th episode, but for me if I need to wait 4 hours for a narrative to find its footing then you've lost me already!

1 hour ago, laagi said:

And thanks for pointing out about Won Jin I thought as much while watching it. Think he only appears briefly in the last epsiode when squaring off against Han So-hee. 

He shows up briefly in either episode 5 or 6 as Hee-soon's driver at the docklands, and he's left to kill a traitor to the organisation which ends with him kicking the body into the water.

1 hour ago, laagi said:

I haven't even heard yet of Sweet Home, but I'll put on my list.

This one's 10 episodes, but try to go in reading as little about it as possible beforehand!

[J.J. Hayden]

Cheers for the shout out @One Armed Boxer

18 hours ago, laagi said:

thanks for pointing out about Won Jin I thought as much while watching it. Think he only appears briefly in the last epsiode when squaring off against Han So-hee. 

Won Jin is actually in every episode except #6 (I didn't see him and I was quite thorough) but it's easy to miss him as most scenes he's just driving, there's about 3 moments you get a decent look at him: the end fight of course; a scene where he garrottes the traitor; and a scene where there's a bunch of bodies around him implying that he had a fight off-screen! why didn't we get to see it!!! But as One Arm Boxer basically said, little Won Jin is better than no Won Jin.

[SunChien]

I liked it and thought it was entertaining even if it was obvious who the main villain was.

Starting to get into some more Kdramas as of late.

[laagi]

On 11/20/2021 at 7:53 PM, SunChien said:

I liked it and thought it was entertaining even if it was obvious who the main villain was.

Starting to get into some more Kdramas as of late.

I'd highly recommend checking out Dr. Brain on Apple TV+

[Daxtreme]

I watched this recently and have detailed my thoughts on letterboxd already, but basically I thought it was really cool but flawed.

Flawed for the same reasons you guys said. The narrative has severe issues. But the rest is just great! Great acting, great action, great atmosphere and especially soundtrack.

I mean, anything I watch with clean fight scenes like this

I can't dislike.