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[HanCinema's Drama Review] "My Name" Episode 3

Tae-joo (played by Lee Hak-joo) is Doo-jin's chief lieutenant in the Dongcheon Gang. I bring this up because an exceptionally bloody scene near the end of this episode hinges entirely on the viewer being able to recognize him. "My Name" skips a lot of steps when it comes to exposition. I also didn't recognize the return of attempted rapist Kang-jae as a flamboyant drug pusher because we were told his face would be completely disfigured but his scar barely even looks like a scratch.

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"My Name" has the bad habit of being able to annoy me with minor details like this that aren't exactly relevant to anything that's actually happening. I had assumed the story was taking place in Busan, partially due to scenery but also due to the city's importance as a port. A drug deal with the Japanese seems to confirm this. Then we have an exterior shot of our heroine Ji-woo outside an Incheon police bureau.

Then in another blink and you'll miss it moment the big wall of crime evidence features a map of Yeong Island, which is near Busan. I get that in practice dramas will shoot in a wide variety of locations but typically production staff make a better effort to either obscure explicit place references or explicitly tell us where the story's taking place. The complete disinterest "My Name" has in doing that is a testament to the drama's focus on style over substance.

Even basic continuity is questionable. In the opening scenes Pil-do is giving Ji-woo a hard time for beating too many people up at their drug bust, but as we plainly saw Ji-woo was making no progress until she started beating everyone up. The task Pil-do gave her was so obviously and unreasonably difficult at first I thought he was trying to haze her. I still can't tell whether Pil-do is supposed to seem untrustworthy or if this incongruity is just bad writing.

So how did "My Name" shoot up to fourth place on the international Netflix leaderboard? Well, the action scenes are still pretty cool. The raid on the boat has definite "The Villainess" vibes with its extensive usage of first person shooter video game style camerawork. And the aforementioned ending scene has all the bloody action any gangster thriller fan could hope for. I just wish I had a better idea of what was even going on there without having to abuse the rewind feature.

Review by William Schwartz

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"My Name" is directed by Kim Jin-min-I, written by Kim Ba-da, and features Han So-hee, Park Hee-soon, Kim Sang-ho, Ahn Bo-hyun, Lee Hak-joo, Chang Ryul. Broadcasting information in Korea: 2021/10/15, Fri on Netflix.

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