Chinese Title : 雷普利小姐
Also Known as : Miss Ripley Who I Loved…
Previously known as: 굿바이 미스 리플리 / Goodbye Miss Ripley
Genre: Melodrama, romance
Episodes: 16
Broadcast network: MBC
Broadcast period: 2011-May-30 to 2011-July-19
Air time: Monday & Tuesday 21:55
Synopsis
Two very different men fall in love with Jang Mi Ri, a woman whose life is a complicated web of lies, propelled by her greedy desires that stem from an unfortunate childhood. Jang Myung Hoon is an ambitious hotelier who maintains perfect control of himself and his life, while Yutaka is the warm and gentle heir of a Korean-Japanese hotel conglomerate. Their love for Mi Ri and her tragic ambition eventually leads them down the path of destruction.
Miss Ripley is based on the real life case of Shin Jung Ah, a university professor and art curator at Dongguk University who was discovered to have forged her creditials in order to get hired, with the help of her boyfriend (then presidential secretary) Byun Yang Kyoon, and embezzled funds from the art gallery’s corporate sponsorship.
Cast
Lee Da Hae as Jang Mi Ri
- Park Ha Young as young Mi Ri
Kim Seung Woo as Jang Myung Hoon
Micky Yoochun as Yukata
Kang Hye Jung as Na Hee Joo
Extended Cast
Hwang Ji Hyun as Lee Gwi Yeon
Choi Myung Gil as Lee Hwa
Lee Sang Yeob as Ha Chul Jin
Song Jae Ho as President Lee
Jang Yong as Song In Soo
Kim Na Woon as Kang Shi Young
Kim Chang Wan as Director Choi
Baek Bong Ki as as Deputy Manager Kim
Lee Soo Mi (이수미) as Jo Eun Bom
Kim Jung Tae as Hirayama
Min Joon Hyun as Manager Han
Park Ji Yeon as Yuu (cameo)
Production Credits
Producer: Han Hee
Director: Choi Yi Sup, Choi Won Suk
Screenwriter: Kim Sun Young
In an intro to an anthology of his avant garde plays, Richard Foreman writes how he most enjoys the beginnings of movies before you can figure out what's going on. Once the plot becomes apparent, the film becomes less engaging. At least, to him. In that case, he'd probably love Running 7 Dogs because the first half of the movie bounces so quickly from scene to scene and introduces so many characters before any one of them is truly established that you really aren't sure who's who and what's what for a long, long time. Even after you've deduced the basics, Running 7 Dog's logic still challenges passive viewing because it so often strains credibility.
H, Lee Jong-hyuk's moody procedural drama about an imprisoned serial killer who remains unstoppable even behind bars, isn't particularly hard to figure out. You quickly discern that Detective Kang (Ji Jin-hee) is involved in the slew of murders at the movie's center and that the clues pointing to other suspects are just there to throw you — and his fashionably crossdressing female partner Detective Lee (Yum Jung-ah) — off the trail. Lee, like you, is not so easily fooled though. Unlike the lead police duo's main sidekick — fat, jolly and admittedly none-too-bright Detective Park (Sung ji-ru), she's smarter than your average man-in-blue; she's a circumspect investigator who gains more by thinking hard while coolly smoking a cigarette (that never shortens over time) than she would get by grilling her perp Shin-hyun (Cho Seung-woo) in an effort to find out what's driving him to slit the throats and cut off the ring-fingers of young, sometimes lesbian, pregnant women. She'll leave that task to Dr. Chu (Kim Sun-kyung), the enigmatic and questionably ethical psychiatrist who respects her client's privacy more than the safety of random, future victims.
I Saw the Devil is a high-octane thriller that's got something to teach if you can hear it over the accelerated beating of your heart. The lesson is this: A successful revenge is a Pyrrhic victory. When undercover agent Kim Soo-hyeon (Lee Byung-hun) decides to play cat-and-mouse with serial killer Kyung-chul (Choi Min-sik) who raped, murdered then dismembered Kim's wife (Oh San-ha) and many others, he has to deal with some casualties along the way. For each time he releases his prey only to stalk him again, some innocent bystander is likely to get hit, stabbed, or choked. (If you're really unlucky, you'll suffer all three.) Soo-hyeon also submerges himself in a heretofore unconsidered freaky-scary world where mass murderers crop up time and again as if a whole underground network of interconnected sociopaths existed just below society's surface. (David Lynch would have a field day with an American remake!) So while, Soo-hyeon's got high connections within the police force — his father-in-law is Squad Chief Jang (Jeon Gook-hwan), he's going to need to draw on more than those resources to beat Kyung-chul at his own game. You see, Kyung-chul's got powerful allies too, especially one old buddy — a good-natured cannibal (Choi Moo-seong), with a violent girlfriend (Kim In-seo) — who enlightens Kyung-chul over dinner re: Soo-hyeon's "hunter" mindset. This mealtime revelation allows Kyung-chul to turn the tables at least for awhile.
Sigh. Why isn't Lee Hang-bae's Monopoly better than it is? Why? It has sections that are pretty interesting. It also periodically suggests complicated back stories for its characters — an attractive trio that's masterminding the biggest swindle in Korean banking history. I'm certainly predisposed to like lead character Kyung Ho (Yang Dong-kun): a gay computer nerd who's all-too-willing to throw his morals out the window for John (Kim Seong-su), the emotionally manipulative, American heartthrob who eventually shows his commitment by running over said tech geek's homophobic co-worker, then backing over the jerk a second time to make sure the job is done. (Since this is a Korean movie, there's no shortage of vomit to prove our hero is sickened by the action even as he's won over by John's devotion.)