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[HanCinema's Drama Review] "Three Days" Episode 7

Once again we find Tae-kyeong not being the most cooperative lead character. This kind of action thriller typically requires a main character who's willing to break the rules, but when we see Tae-kyeong fighting people on his own side just as much as the actual villains, it's difficult to ignore the thematic significance. Even if it's in flashback the guy really seems determined to win every possible encounter, regardless of whether or not it will actually help his long term goals.

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Let's take, for example, the confrontation at the suite. Tae-kyeong chooses to go in alone, and deliberately doesn't tell anyone what he's planning to do. In a life-and-death situation, that's justifiable. But in this particular case the situation ends up going badly, entirely because Tae-kyeong is trying to be an action hero more than he is remembering his actual motivations.

While I'd like to credit all this as being deliberate, really, it's kind of difficult to tell overall where the story with Tae-kyeong is going. The narrative seems to understand that he needs to be punished for trying do everything alone, but I'm not sure Tae-kyeong himself understands that. Events do seem to be moving right now in such a way to at least get him working on a team again, so maybe this whole conflict will fade away. Really, who knows.

For the most part this isn't a particularly violent episode anyway. Outside of the flashback and the confrontation at the suite there's no real fights, and most of the intellectual energy is spent on backroom political talks that take a pretty grim view as to the value of doing everything in a lawful, orderly manner. President Do-hwi's speech at the end is a fairly good take on the overall situation. Characters are forced to choose between acting morally correct in the abstract versus acting morally correct in the short-term. It's a dumb ethical question being posed for blatantly cynical reasons, and Do-hwi knows it.

But this does work to put the drama's broader themes at a bit of a crossroads. So Tae-kyeong is dumb for being a maverick, but with other characters it's noble? Obviously context is important- Tae-kyeong is pushing around people who basically like him, whereas everyone else is more directly dealing with an evil political conspiracy. These questions are a bit complicated and somewhat annoying, so it's relieving to watch the preview and see that "Three Days" is planning to move onto more high powered action sequences. Those continue to be a lot of fun, even if at times the context makes them somewhat laughable.

Review by William Schwartz

"Three Days" is directed by Sin Kyeong-soo, written by Kim Eun-hee-I and features Park Yoo-chun, Son Hyun-joo, Park Ha-sun, So Yi-hyun, Yoon Je-moon, Choi Won-young and Jang Hyun-sung.

 

 

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