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Time Between Dog and Wolf (2007)


Time Between Dog and Wolf
개와 늑대의 시간

(Jul – Sept 2007)

who’s in it
Lee JunKi (Iljimae, My Girl, Hero)
Nam SangMi (ILPK, The Grand Chef)
Jung KyungHo (Smile You)

what’s it about
Lee JunKi plays Lee SooHyun, a haunted National Intelligence Service agent who follows in his father’s footsteps both in career and purpose. His father had been a spook agent stationed in Bangkok to bring down a crime syndicate shoveling drugs into Korea, a far-reaching triad with its base in Thailand. This investigation lead to his own murder as well as Lee JunKi’s mother (eventually). As a rookie NIS agent, Lee JunKi attempts to avenge his family by finishing the job his father had long ago started and also hopes to kill the man who murdered his mother. 

Another significant part of Lee JunKi’s childhood in Thailand is Nam SangMi, a fellow expat in Bangkok he’d developed a crush on as a young boy. The two were separated when both children left Thailand due to their respective family situations. After the death of his mother, the orphaned Lee JunKi is adopted by an old NIS colleague of his father’s and taken back to Korea.

Many years later, Nam SangMi and Lee JunKi reunite in Korea by chance through Lee JunKi’s adopted brother, Jung KyungHo, and find themselves rekindling their friendship and their mutual attraction. Nam SangMi is now an art dealer who has more of a connection to his parents’ murderer than Lee JunKi initially understands. All the while, the triad has expanded their base of operations into Korea and just as the couple’s feelings grow for one another, their secrets from one another also accrue, one big secret being Lee JunKi’s job as a super secret spy—one driven by torment and revenge.   

When Lee JunKi loses himself, both in identity and purpose, during a deep cover assignment into the crime syndicate he is desperate to destroy, the moral lines that separate justice and revenge, brother and enemy, love and hate become blurred—the balance between right and wrong becomes obscured by the lies and secrets between them all. 

commitment 
16 episodes

network
MBC

wildcard factor
Who isn’t fascinated by the dark underbelly of our society, the places where betrayal and blood is a way of life? Who doesn’t find a strange allure for the emotionally splintered people who live in that violent playground? Show me a person who isn’t, and I’ll show you a liar. The reason why we regular humans are unable to resist this kind of brutal escapist fare is because it is so far away from our own realm of reality but we understand on some level that these worlds are very real for others. Someone pisses you off? Well, bash his brains in, of course. Not for you or I, but for some, this is how their world works. These kinds of high-octane plots take place in an insane world populated by people equally mad, on both sides of the fight. They’re two sides of a coin, you see, these tales about organized crime and the intelligence agencies that try to bring them down. They are the two sides of humanity. Inevitably, moral lines will become muddied when dealing with a fight that occurs in the dark and that is what makes conflicts between cops and criminals timeless. That area of grey where black and white meet, that muddy area where the good guys and bad guys fight.

If you can get past the beyond-cheesy poster and the occasional tendencies for overdone melodrama, you may end up really enjoying this one, like I did. Not only was the drama actually decently written, it was exciting and thrilling to watch. In playing a tormented NIS agent caught between two worlds, Lee JunKi essentially got to play three characters and all of them were miserable people, but amusing to follow, especially if you enjoy the charismatic, macho-crying-only-on-the-inside type of heroes (which I do).

Besides, it was an opportunity to see Lee JunKi and equally handsome Jung KyungHyo play international spies that shoot bullets and missile-like glares at one another...well, I ask you, what’s wrong with that? Not very much, I assure you.

first impressions 
Wolf was unexpectedly surprising, but in a positive way. I hadn’t expected to enjoy any part of this at all and the only reason why I even bothered despite my prejudices against what I assumed would be yet another transparently melodramatic, half-baked spy story was my inability to say no to Lee JunKi. Having just written that, yes, it was melodramatic and sometimes half-baked, but the story wasn’t half bad either, in fact, I’d give it credit for at least recognizing its strengths and weaknesses and focusing on what it did well: Lee JunKi’s badassery. As expected, it does adhere to some of the usual genre conventions, but all in all, the emotional heart behind the characters manage to pull it away from becoming a boilerplate action dud. It definitely had its moments of clunkery, but the awesome swagger about it kept me coming back for more.
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