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[HanCinema's Drama Review] "The Full Sun" Episode 4

Let's consider Yeong-won's character for a moment. In the first episode she was fairly bright and optimistic about life. The woman was dead-set on the whole marriage issue and was willing to persevere in the most difficult circumstances to get what she wanted. Even though Yeong-won's trade of choice is quite literally diamonds, her life is surprisingly lacking in cutthroat tendencies.

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Well, was anyway. Yeong-won in the present day is a wholly different character. She snaps at people, and is all around generally hostile. There are some moments of tenderness to be sure, but to a large extent Yeong-won is herself heavily tenderized by the loss of her fiance, to the point that lashing out is a fairly reasonable response from her perspective. It's also the correct move, given that us viewers know she's being targeted in a scam.

Speaking of the scam...and all the other story stuff really...I honestly don't have much idea what's going on. "The Full Sun" is a complicated drama, but right now the complications all just feel kind of pointless. When shocking revelations come out my first reaction isn't really surprise and shock so much as it is just, wait, what? The surprise elements of the drama feel like they're being tossed together at random. I'm not really sure what we're supposed to be getting out of them.

But worse than that, "The Full Sun" is fairly boring to boot. How does a drama about jewel thieves and murder get boring? Well, tossing in a subplot about rich people family politics is a good way to go about it. Does anybody remember the political details behind the marriages in "Don't Look Back : The Legend of Orpheus"? No, of course not, because no one watching a drama that uses action and suspense as a selling point wants to hear a lecture about how and why rich people get married. At least not unless it's relevant somehow- which in the first episode, it was.

"The Full Sun" is a drama right now that desperately just needs something to happen. I don't even care what at this point. There are decent actors involved here but unless there's some kind of physical or emotional event going on it's hard to tell the difference. Characters can only be interesting to the extent they can be empathized with, and right now, it's difficult to emphasize with people who keep hesitating for no reason and discussing topics no one actually cares about.

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.

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