[HanCinema's Drama Review] "The Full Sun" Episode 16 Final

Why does Se-ro hate himself? We've seen evidence of the fact that he hates himself throughout the entire run of "The Full Sun", but he's been so wrapped up in Yeong-won's problems that Se-ro has never really stopped to question his motivation. In the opener to this episode, Yeong-won finally forces him to engage on this point. And it really is the one essential moment that the drama has been building up to.

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Se-ro has constantly felt guilty and frustrated. The problem is he's never had anybody to talk to about these feelings, because everyone he's emotionally close to has been directly promoting the behavior that's been making him so miserable. And that's what changed with Yeong-won. The interplay and chemistry between Yoon Kye-sang and Han Ji-hye has always been the high point of "The Full Sun", and it's impressive how they're able to sell the romance of this story in such depressing circumstances. Even in the darkest hour Yeong-won is reassuring. She's able to help Se-ro hate himself that much less, and it makes all the difference.

Meanwhile the villains just...give up really. There's a lot of focus here on Kang-jae. His character has always been difficult to sympathize with, mostly because the man's a giant work. Still, his final scene does have a fairly good amount of resonance, although the epilogue is rather strange. As far as I can remember the subplot with Jae-in had barely any exposure at all, and now it's a significant part of the full ending?

Really, the ending leaves a lot to be desired in the logic department. There's something so horribly clean about it. Of course, "The Full Sun" has always been much better with emotions than storyline mechanics. The drama has set up a scheme, and the characters resolve that scheme, somehow. The point has never been about making the scheme convincing or sensible, but creating a situationwhere they have to choose between material gain and friendship.

Maybe it is cheating a little bit that an alternate way of both material gain and friendship is presented. On the flip side Tae-oh and Kang-jae never had any particularly good reason for acting the way they did. It was just how business was conducted, which might be why their ultimate decisions comes off as so unsatisfying. If their motivation was dumb to begin with, it's difficult to get truly mad about having grasped failure. That's ultimately what "The Full Sun" leaves us with- a dreamlike ending where the impossible dream was realized. And it's impossible in that we see what the characters really wanted was actually quite modest.

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.