[HanCinema's Drama Review] "The Full Sun" Episode 2

Se-ro (played by Yoon Kye-sang) finds himself in an awkward position. The guy just wants to have another talk with his dad Do-joon (played by Lee Dae-yeon), but ends up finding some guy clearly being held prisoner against his will for reasons not particularly clear. The frustration in this moment is palpable. Se-ro is angry on multiple levels- mostly just for the clear slight against himself, finding that his father is engaged in unnecessary criminal enterprises.

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And then there's the gunshot. Once more it's not at all clear what's going on with the storyline here. Kidnapping a random security guard was dumb enough on its own- what possible point could there be to killing the guy too? Well, actually, I can think of one possible plot twist that could explain all this. It's a pretty dumb one though so I'm just going to hope "The Full Sun" isn't going to go down that path.

This episode gets into much more interesting territory elsewhere by dealing with the simpler emotions of grief and anger. Yeong-won is thrown into a huge mess by the shooting, and it's easy to feel sorry for her. For everyone involved really. However absurd the first episode may have been the basic inexplicable results hereare very easy to relate to. Neither Se-ro nor Yeong-won has any idea what's going on, and even if they did the greater problems of the situation would hardly evaporate.

So this is where the drama is right now. Se-ro knows that he's been used as a patsy, but however infuriated he gets on the emotional level, the man just can't bring himself to sell out his family and plays along with their scheme. It's a bad choice really- the situation's not going to get any better. Although admittedly the main reason we know that is because of the drama's tone. Se-ro might yet harbor some fantasies of the situation eventually getting better, and it's hard to blame him for wanting that. Even bad attention feels better than none to the truly desperate.

How all of this is going to spin into a doomed romance is still unclear. We finally get to a meeting between our two leads in the present day, and there's almost no chemistry whatsoever. At this point in the drama such a set-up is most likely deliberate. Given what we've seen of Se-ro so far it's rather difficult to posit him as being an attractive desirable man. At any rate the story appears to have stopped being explicitly dumb for the moment, so "The Full Sun" is at least watchable enough to wait and see what's going to happen next.

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.