Hotelking

I liked the beginning a lot, but as usual with Korean series, it went downhill as time went on. There was such an unbelievable amount of flaws, nonsense, and bad logic that it defied reason. There was a lot of screaming, crying, and shock. On the other hand, there were some enjoyable scenes with no overacting where they tried to follow logic and common sense. Unfortunately, there were too many lies and plots for my taste and I just thought WTF, shook my head and laughed about it. In the end I thought the cripple on the stick was the saddest character; even though he's pretty badass, he was the one I sympathized with the most because he kept getting slammed to the ground and couldn't even defend himself properly. Lee Da-hae didn't do anything above average, but she wasn't below average either. I found her heroine pathetic and weepy at times; my favorite part was when she pulled herself together and finally stood up for herself or the hotel. Lee Dong-Wook played an expressionless dummy; he was good at it, but when he put on a look of great indignation, I was afraid his eyes were going to pop out of their sockets – even though a lot of times it looked ridiculous, it's clear to me that being a person whose eyes bulge like that is definitely scary. The music was decent. The cinematography, on the other hand, wasn't, and at times I felt like the cameraman didn't really think through what he wanted to shoot. If everything had stayed within believable boundaries, without so much that rang false, I think it would have made a much better (and also shorter) series. A weak 3 stars. (01.10.2014)