And, whoa. Like, Keanu whoa. All I knew going in was that he plays a stuntman that gets involved in some spy stuff after some tragedy. I had vague inklings that the tragedy involved his brother.
So. Okay. Lee Seung-Gi plays Cha Dal-Geon. He's an aspiring stuntman and has been taking care of his young nephew after something happened to his older brother. He's struggling a bit -- he's young and trying his best to take care of his nephew properly. He dreams of being the next Jackie Chan / Bruce Lee, but has decided to put that dream aside so he can concentrate on being a good uncle. Nephew Hoon, for his part, is grateful but also feeling guilty when he realises his uncle's struggles. So they're in a bit of a spat right before Hoon is to go off on a government sponsored trip to Morocco to participate in a taekwondo exhibition.
The flight crashes, killing all onboard. A last video of Hoon was uploaded to the Cloud telling Uncle he caught him throwing out his stuntman stuff and telling him how much he loves him and he'll eat all the eggs next time Uncle makes them. So, yeah, tear jerking.
Meanwhile, viewers catch glimpses of machinations behind the scenes involving defence companies vying for a huge trillion dollar contract for fighter jets. A guy (who worked for one of those companies; the one who was probably NOT going to win the bid) had tried to warn Incheon airport that the plane was going to crash; he's killed as he runs. The woman that took the call is knocked out/down. The airport's computers all crash. And the plane goes down. It's pretty obvious to the viewer that the one company is behind it; they want the contract and aren't worried about collateral damage.
Dal-Geon and the families travel to Morocco for a funeral service at the beach as the bodies couldn't be recovered from the sea. At the airport there, he sees a man he recognises from the video his nephew sent him and immediately gives chase. Who is this man that was on the plane? Why is he here, alive? The guy fights him off, assuming at first that he's an agent or something. There is a terrifically choreographed fight scene where Lee Seung-Gi (or his stuntman, I dunno) is going all parkour over the rooftops and jumping onto a moving car. It is unrelenting. The guy gets away, but only after Dal-Geon is literally tossed off a cliff (that he climbs back up at the end of the episode).
I'm sure he'll wind up somehow working with Go Hae-Ri (Bae Suzy) who we already know is an NIS agent based at the embassy in Morocco. She's working undercover.
It is very obvious that this was a high budget production ($20 million, apparently). Production-wise, it's like a movie. They didn't pull any stops here. And all the actors are great so far -- I'd only really seen Lee Seung-Gi in You're All Surrounded before and Twogether (but that's just him being him). This show is leaps and bounds beyond that from story to execution. The only slight dodgy bits were some English speaking non-Korean actors in the beginning that were not stellar (was the one dude trying to do a Russian accent? I dunno what that was).
Hence, whoa.
Incidentally, young Hoon is played by the child actor Moon Woo-Jin who I've seen in SO many things (What's Wrong with Secretary Kim, The Beauty Inside, My ID is Gangnam Beauty, etc.) This kid really gets work! He's good, though his part was small in this one. And Shin Sung-Rok is in this one too, though I haven't seen him yet. No idea if he's a good guy or a bad guy, though he's mostly known for bad guys (like in My Love From the Star), so I'm guessing he might be bad.
Anyway, pretty impressed with this one so far. It's very intense. And hubby did take peeks at it. Maybe I"ll someday get him to watch something with subtitles.
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