[HanCinema's Drama Review] "The Full Sun" Episode 9

Yeong-won's family are kind of like reverse mobsters. Whereas actual mobsters try to make a point of separating business from personal vendettas, Yeong-won's family are attacking her in ways that simply don't even make sense, and are paying the price for it by having everything backfire so spectacularly. So far all they've managed to do is alienate the woman and make her more angry. Not much of an accomplishment.

Even as intimidators they're pretty incompetent. Se-ro is, for the most part, non-plussed by the attack he endured at the last cliffhanger. Evidently the goons didn't do a very good job getting the message across. To the contrary, Se-ro simply strikes back right where it hurts, exposing the lie rather than running away from it. Yeong-won, too, is simply out of patience. She barely even cares about business anymore, and it's difficult to blame her.

The interesting part of Se-ro's reaction is that he goes straight to Yeong-won to plan a counterattack- not the other con artists. Considering the clear physical danger the man is in, it says a lot that his loyalties aren't even slightly conflicted on this point. He trusts Yeong-won. He doesn't trust his associates. Indeed, they're less concerned that Se-ro has been badly beaten as they are that the plan might be in jeopardy. This is, again, nothing new, but Se-ro's main character trait has been the fact that he's in denial, so this turnabout makes all too much sense.

The tragic part about the story in "The Full Sun" is that a hypothetical happy ending is very visible here. Yeong-won could ditch her family Se-ro could ditch the con artists, and they could just go live somewhere else far away from these awful influences. The other characters wouldn't even care- they practically want Yeong-won and Se-ro out of the way anyway. It's just a testament to their petty sense of spite that Yeong-won and Se-ro have to stay involved in a storyline that they clearly hate.

The music in "The Full Sun" has always been decent, but I really appreciated the politely frustrated piano chords this time around. The score really sells the sense that this is a drama about characters forced to put on false shows for people who they have an emotional connection to but don't particularly like. That's a terribly frustrating position to be in. Especially when we in the audience know that Yeong-won is always just one step away from hating Se-ro too.

Review by William Schwartz

"The Full Sun" is directed by Bae Kyeong-soo, Kim Jung-hyun-III, written by Heo Seong-hye and features Yoon Kye-sang, Han Ji-hye and Cho Jin-woong.