1. “Iris” is a tivi series of 2009, of 20 episodes, with the big names of the time Lee Byung-hun who plays a (not so) secret agent Kim Hyun-jun and beautiful Kim Tae-hee, also an agent-profiler, Choi Seung-hee. The two were sufficient to attract huge Asiatic audiences – being well-known stars who helped promote the second-generation Korean wave (Hallyu) in exporting Korean culture, especially cinematic and music products.
Neither Miss Kim Tae-hee nor Lee Byung-hun are good actors in the sense that Meryl Streep or Nicole Kidman and Richard Gere or Robert Redford are, but both are very attractive and undoubted pop idols, like many others in the Korean show business. Lee won the Grand Prize Daesang in 2009 KBS Drama Awards and Kim the Excellence award in Mid-length Drama, same year, and some more awards. Others also won awards in 2009 and 2010 including best Producer Chung Tae-won and Best Production Director, Kim Kyu-tae! In the 2010 46th Baeksang Arts Award Iris won the award of the Best Drama! (God knows why!)
2. Of actors, I thought only Kim So-yeon as Kim Sun-hwa (2nd photo), a North-Korean female agent who falls in love with Kim Hyun-jun and thereafter has strong inner conflict, was any good in expressing mutely her inner condition. Also, Choi Seung-hyun as Vick (2nd photo), the ruthless cold-blooded killer, agent of Iris organisation. But why the head of the Forensic Dept in the South Korean NSS was made an incredible caricature of a man is beyond my comprehension; he was not funny at all, just ludicrous.
3. The plot unfolds with reasonably bearable staging in the first 5 episodes. But in the 2nd episode I suspected that Baek, director of National Security Service, is a traitor and by the 5th it became a certainty as there was no reason at all for him to be in Hungary. Also, by the 5th I began to realise that the director and producers were out to present a cheap success feeding the most sentimental side of the audience’s feelings. And to make sure of this they introduced soppy pop-songs in the background of what they considered to be intense emotional scenes – just in case the audience did not catch the feeling from what the screen showed. This, of course, is common practise in most if not all Korean films and serials.
Also, in the 5th episode Seung-hee has a nightmare which may hint at future developments but again this was unnecessary and betrayed the uncertainty of (producers and) director and scriptwriter.
4. In the 6th all logic and coherence are thrown to the winds. The immediate developments have ne;ither rhyme nor reason. Sun-hwa, the North Korean female agent appears quite suddenly and without explanation in a South Korean prison. She’s interrogated (quite out of order) by profiler Seung-hee and, surprisingly, is given a poison-capsule to take and so facilitate her escape. She then appears in Japan (followed by Seung-hee) but no explanation is given how she passes through police forces and passport controls and other secret services!
Meanwhile (and this is another incredibility), Hyun-jun has somehow survived the plane crash in Hungary and appears now in Japan, arrested from his stay in Akita (where he had been on vacation initially with Seung-hee). Only much later shall we learn that an anti-Iris organisation run by “the Doctor” had helped him! He gets tortured and interrogated and, finally, is given a mission by the Japanese officer Erika Sato to kill a notorious politician – which he does. But Sato’s superior arranges to have him eliminated. However, he escapes and returns to Akito.
So, from 7 onward you feel that anything might happen according to the scriptwriter’s and director’s whims.
5. In 8 young Yuki’s death in Akito is totally contrived. Hyun-jun’s grief is totally unconvincing. It seems to be a general notion in these serials that staring blankly, clenching jaws and gushing outing torrential tears express deep emotions – accompanied by silly pop songs.
Here we have some nice photography of Japanese land and sea. Unfortunately, we have many repeats and flashbacks that do not advance the plot nor define better the characters. They simply add footage.
In the 11th episode, when Seung-hee confronts the masked Hyun-jun (who is now a terrorist), they stare at each other too long. He shoots someone who tries to shoot her and she shoots Hyun-jun (who we learn later wears bulletproof vest). She moves slowly to remove his mask but – gets knocked on the head by Sun-hwa. All this is trying to generate suspense but is totally unconvincing.
But really, by the end of 11, Seung-hee should have enough indications that Sa-woo (Hyun-jun’s close friend) is in love with her and behaves treacherously against Hyun-jun. Also, enough indications for Baek’s treason. Both manipulate events against the truth and national interest. Hyun-jun also should have realised that Sun-hwa is in love with him and is trying to keep him away from Seung-hee. (If protagonists didn’t evince stupidity at various stages, the plot would not proceed!)
6. In 13, Hyun-jun conveys the unconscious Seung-hee home and mumbles that he has become a monster, and she should forget him! He could have told her (though unconscious) the truth. But the director wants more sentimentality….
Only in 14, are Sa-woo and Baek discovered as traitors by Pak, the section leader.
But how from an old photograph alone, Sa-woo found the “doctor” (the anti-Iris man who had helped Hyun-jun) and his address is another mystery, and their small team manages to kill all 18 guards and the doctor – who miraculously activates a video camera and sends the whole incident of his murder to allies.
There follow several other inconsistencies and contradictions and really, the whole should have ended long before.
7. The biggest and most ludicrous deception is in 18, in two instances.
a) The terrorists hold 107 hostages in a mall and Hyun-jun goes in to negotiate their release with the chief terrorist Sa-woo. Some terrorists do not want to release first women and children and in the ensuing shoot-out Sa-woo and Hyun-jun begin to gun down the terrorists who also shoot back but ineffectually.
All terrorists get killed. So also, Sa-woo. (A lot of flashbacks and tears from Hyun-jun and Seung-hee over dying Sa-woo.) But, later, just before the Conference of the high officials, we learn that the terrorists had dressed hostages as terrorists, and these got killed while the true terrorists escaped dressed as civilians (!) and come to the Conference to kill the president and others. Imagine experienced agents like Hyun-jun and Sa-woo to mistake inexperienced hostages as terrorists holding guns and shooting to kill!
b) The ending has Seung-hee waiting innocently for Hyun-jun at a light house (why this arrangement for heaven’s sake?) and Hyun-jun arriving by car in the distance bringing a ring to propose marriage. But Hyun-jun gets shot in the head and the car stops exactly opposite the lighthouse. All unbeknown to her, Hyun-jun dies slowly with a flood of flashback happy memories!
Why so much sentimentality?
8. This ending must be connected with the notion of Destiny/Fate which is mentioned and often plays significant role in many serials. It is perhaps an attempt to give significance to Baek’s words to both Hyun-jun and Seung-hee that he had framed their way of life and so had acted as (the hand of) Fate; and since they had deviated from that framework (by opposing him?) a painful tragic end and would necessarily ensue.
All this is, of course, absolute hogwash. Baek was a criminal who broke all his oaths of loyalty to his country pursuing selfish ends in the organisation Iris which sought power and material profit.
Widespread corruption in the nation, the government, public services, the private section of businesses and commerce, on the other hand, may well be a ubiquitous element. We find it in many other serials (Stranger, Chief of staff). What is really Fate? I’m afraid the scriptwriters do not know or they don’t show us.
The aim of all these serials is to make money, not a good movie, i.e. not a good entertaining and didactic tivi show. So, they work to a formula of (average) 16 episodes and contrive incidents that fill these 16 or even 20 (and even 50!) episodes.
