Plot:
A man with Alzheimer's is accused of murder, and his hyperthymesic son becomes a lawyer to get him off death row.
Main Characters:
Seo Jin-woo {Yoo Seung-ho} - Jin-woo is raised by his father after a tragic car accident killed the rest of their family. He becomes a lawyer to clear his father's name, and engages in a seemingly impossible battle with the endlessly wealthy and powerful Nam family. When finally equipped to take down their empire of evil, he finds that the perfect memory that he has both hated and relied upon is being attacked by the same disease that has already caused his father to forget he ever had a son. Can he save his father before he forgets what he is fighting for?
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He is a fascinating character, and I enjoyed his scenes all the way through, even when I was furious at him for bowing to the Nams, no matter his reasoning. He did the unforgivable, and it is a tribute to both Park Sung-woong and Yoo Seung-ho that I continued to adore his relationship with Jin-woo, despite what happened.
Also, while I do not know how accurate his satoori accent for this drama was, I could listen to him talk all day long. :D
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| Dong-ho is so done with certain people... |
Lee In-ah {Park Min-young} - In-Ah is a young law student who meets Jin-woo on a bus and accuses him of stealing from her. They live near each other, and eventually become very close friends. The trial of Jin-woo's father ends up changing the course of her life multiple times, and her skills are a lovely support to Jin-woo, despite being underutilized by the drama.
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Nam Gyu-man {Namgung Min} - Gyu-man is a psychotic chaebol who sees people as mere pawns to be used or abused at his pleasure. He could so easily have been a ridiculous character with utterly unbelievable temper tantrums, but Namgung Min played him to creepy perfection, with just enough vulnerability that there were times I actually felt sorry for him, even as I despised the ground he walked on.
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Ahn Soo-bum {Lee Si-eon} - Soo-bum is Gyu-man's way-too-long-suffering secretary, and obviously a key secret-keeper in this story. I did really wonder about his childhood, because the kind of abuse he took from Gyu-man while continuing to call their relationship a 'friendship' was all kinds of problematic.
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| permanently ashamed of his boss/friend... |
Kang Suk-gyu {Kim Jin-woo} - Jin-woo is a judge and friend of Gyu-man. {Clearly competing interests.} Another extremely intriguing character, and one who I'm counting as a main character just because of how much I loved the sheer righteousness he could infuse into a conversation.
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Cautionary Notes:
Issues include murder, obviously {it was supposed to be traumatizing, and it succeeded}, multiple rapes, both implied and discussed {the number of rape cases in court got to be a little overwhelming}, a character with intermittant explosive disorder and a massively sadistic streak, and suicide, both threatened and completed.
Not so much cautions as simply things I disliked, while I could see what the goal was for the relationship between In-ha and her mother, I mostly ended up just disliking her mother - it was not well done. Most of the female characters, including In-ha and Gyu-man's sister, were criminally underused. But this was a drama about fathers and sons, not about mothers and daughters or brothers and sisters, so it made sense.
Favorite Scene:
Two of my favorites were...
and
The others are probably too spoiler-y. :)
Least Favorite Scene:
I disliked a scene where Jin-woo was egged just because the aesthetics were displeasing...but the scenes I particularly did not like were those were the villain was being particularly horrendous. Sometimes it seemed too over the top, and the scenes where he beat his secretary or ordered an underling to pick up broken glass with his mouth, or hunted down the girl he murdered were just plain disturbing.
{A scene where he was beaten by his father not only explained a lot, but had a lot of nasty implications for how he had grown up.}
Random Quotes:
Numerous exchanges like this...
Interestingly, I have never seen so many Bible verses onscreen outside of a Kendrick Brothers' or Billy Graham movie. There was no pastor or church involved, but the main characters were very familiar with the Bible, and one character 'gets religion,' as another character terms it. That religion seemed pretty works-based with a need for atoning for one's sins, but then the character directly quoted a verse about believing on Jesus Christ for salvation {to the main villain, which was kind of awesome}.
Overall:
This...is truly one of the strangest dramas I've ever seen. I'll be perfectly honest and say I started watching it for Yoo Seung Ho - I was blown away by his acting as a teen, and was very curious to see how his acting would be now that he's grown up and back from the army. And, for about the first 10 episodes, I continued watching it because of him {i.e. if someone else had been playing the lead, I might have gotten bored and distracted by a different drama}. The episodes did not drag when I was watching them, but nothing seemed to happen - Yoo Seung Ho's character ugly-cried every few minutes and things went from bad to worse and everyone was miserable.
Seriously, everyone was miserable:
Favorite Scene:
Two of my favorites were...
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| the pure hope that entered his eyes when Dong-ho showed up... |
and
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| the obvious mirroring of the previous scene made it extra awesome |
The others are probably too spoiler-y. :)
Least Favorite Scene:
I disliked a scene where Jin-woo was egged just because the aesthetics were displeasing...but the scenes I particularly did not like were those were the villain was being particularly horrendous. Sometimes it seemed too over the top, and the scenes where he beat his secretary or ordered an underling to pick up broken glass with his mouth, or hunted down the girl he murdered were just plain disturbing.
{A scene where he was beaten by his father not only explained a lot, but had a lot of nasty implications for how he had grown up.}
Random Quotes:
“What remains in life is not money or honor – it is memories.”
~ Seo Jae Hyuk
~ Seo Jae Hyuk
“Law and judgement are like the facts & the truth. And the truth can win over the facts”
~ Lee In Ah
~ Lee In Ah
“It not the one who has everything but the one who has nothing to lose who wins.”
~ Park Dong Ho
~ Park Dong Ho
Numerous exchanges like this...
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| that face.... |
Overall:
This...is truly one of the strangest dramas I've ever seen. I'll be perfectly honest and say I started watching it for Yoo Seung Ho - I was blown away by his acting as a teen, and was very curious to see how his acting would be now that he's grown up and back from the army. And, for about the first 10 episodes, I continued watching it because of him {i.e. if someone else had been playing the lead, I might have gotten bored and distracted by a different drama}. The episodes did not drag when I was watching them, but nothing seemed to happen - Yoo Seung Ho's character ugly-cried every few minutes and things went from bad to worse and everyone was miserable.
Seriously, everyone was miserable:
Then came episode 11, and I told The Ambassador, "Forget whatever else I said about Remember: Son's War. Episode 11 is the awakening. All prior was necessary to set up for this. Three minutes in...Yoo Seung Ho has been unleashed. This is why he's so much better as a grey hero. He's terrifying." :D
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| the smirk in the reflection... |
The drama is gorgeously shot and breathtakingly acted. It is most definitely an actor's drama...the story itself was definitely different enough to be fascinating, but there were hints of story threads there surfaced in single episodes and were never followed up on, ideas that were later ignored, and points where I was sure I'd missed part of it because I could not figure out how the storyline had gone from point A to point B. But strange as the story-world was, the actors absolutely sold it and are the biggest reason to watch it.
This is a story about sons, fighting for or against or because of their fathers, a story about good fathers and terrible ones, about substitute fathers and father figures and who sons turn to in their hour of need. It was kind of incredible to watch the father-son relationship explored through the villain and his father, through the hero and his father, and through the grey one in between them and his relationship with both his father and his father figure. My favorite relationship, though, was Dong-ho acting as father to Jin-woo.
Verdict: 3/5
This isn't a typical kdrama, and it's probably not the one I'd recommend starting with if one is curious about Yoo Seung Ho as an actor, even though the writer actually wrote it with him in mind. But it is definitely an intriguing drama, and one well worth watching, especially if you're curious about what a faith-based legal thriller from Korea looks like.
“Who can stop a son who wants to save his father?” ~ Park Dong-ho
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