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City Hunter (2011)
City Hunter
시티헌터
(May – July 2011)
who’s in it
Lee MinHo (Boys Over Flowers, Personal Taste)
Park MinYoung (Sungkyunkwan Scandal)
Lee JoonHyuk (Three Brothers, Equator Man)
Kim SangJoong (My Man’s Woman, Life is Beautiful)
Goo Hara (KARA – idol group member)
what’s it about
In 1983, at night in the hostile waters of North Korea, a South Korean special forces group awaits evacuation after a clandestine assignment to infiltrate Pyongyang. However, instead of rescue, they are systematically executed by their own military. One survivor—Kim SangJoon—makes one of those maniacal blood vows to avenge the murder of his comrades.
Fast forward to now: Lee MinHo is the son of one those fallen comrades, one that had also been Kim SangJoon’s best friend. So naturally, to get the gears moving on his grand revenge, Kim SangJoon steals away his friend’s infant son into the jungles of Southeast Asia with the purpose of hoarding tons and tons of illicit drug money in order to train the kid into a lean mean handsome killing machine. Well, a lean mean killing machine, anyway, the handsome is just a lucky genetic bonus (for us).
The two converge upon Seoul like night vultures to exact their brand of justice—unfortunately, plans go awry when our faux-playboy slash secret-hunter-of-corrupt-politicians Lee MinHo finds himself questioning his purpose in life after falling in love with beautiful presidential guard Park MinYoung.
commitment
20 episodes
network
SBS
first impressions
After the first episode of City Hunter, I was a smidge dismayed. Let’s see, we had several big explosions, a submarine, a couple of mass murders, jungle drug lords, landmines, and elephants—and that was all under one hour. Honestly, it felt like a hot mess, like some badly done sixty minute mash up of Lee JunKi’s 2007 kdrama thriller Time Between Dog and Wolf and the crazy 2008 Ben Stiller and Robert Downey, Jr. action spoof Tropical Thunder. Was this going to be yet another long nonsensical glare-athon mixed with some unintentional machine gun comedy? Everything about this premiere hour sat ill with me, the tone promising all kinds of mayhem that I normally feared of a typical action series.
At the time, I thought to myself, “MinHo, hon, I love ya, but I don’t know if I’m ready for this one.” The show was relocated to my back shelf and left to percolate. Months later, after the show concluded its broadcast run and kdrama fans around the globe unanimously loved it, I decided to go back for a second try. City Hunter fans, let your concerns ease away, the above is only my first impression of City, I have generally nice things to say south of here.
wildcard factor
As everyone knows, Lee MinHo is quite the CF princeling, a celebrity who can seduce people into buying almost anything, from coffee to Cadillacs. Realistically speaking, even in a fictional setting, the groundwork for the main character of this drama was a bit...um, how can I put this nicely...absurd? The concept of a trenchcoat-wearing city slick crusader called the City Hunter was a pretty tough sell: skinny pretty dude who looks like some sort of Burberry model is raised in the drug cartel jungles of Asia to master the art of assassination while cultivating superhuman ninja skills that can take out hordes of nefarious men in a frenzy of swirlies and kickeroos, and of course, not only is he a devil of a prizefighter, but an uber nerd with a surreal brilliant techgeek robot mind like Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook guy). This was a textbook example of improbable perfection...but Lee MinHo actually turned this far-fetched concept into a pleasing watch. I tell you what, he was good, really good at creating just the right persona and making you buy into it. Even if a part of you didn’t completely believe, your disbelief was no match for his self-confidence.
This was a huge wild card, in my opinion, as the character description on this guy was so hilariously implausible. I mean, how does someone raised for most of his life in a jungle become a hacker expert? How? Anyway, if Lee hadn’t done such a good job shrinking down the exaggeration into a credible person, this show would have flopped all ten thousands ways silly. They were really lucky to cast him.
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| Lee MinHo goes undercover. |
This was a huge wild card, in my opinion, as the character description on this guy was so hilariously implausible. I mean, how does someone raised for most of his life in a jungle become a hacker expert? How? Anyway, if Lee hadn’t done such a good job shrinking down the exaggeration into a credible person, this show would have flopped all ten thousands ways silly. They were really lucky to cast him.
