well i watched this in skips mainly because of CJH doing another law drama after Pride and Prejudice but i might rewatch later.

first of all, this is one of the least sophisticated law dramas i have ever watched, writing wise.

this shouldn't be a thriller at all contrary to the tagged genre, it could've been anything else but that. most likely noir.

in terms of cinematography executions, it reminds me a lot of Confession (2019) which uses this dark/greyish undertone a lot to keep the mood mellow.

first of all, in terms of writing. this is probably the simplest way to write a law drama LOL. you can predict the big picture almost right away after the first two sub-cases were thrown in.

usually in better law/thriller dramas, they keep throwing plot twists in the sub-cases to keep you engaged in guessing the real culprit. yeah, that's the biggest problem in the writing here. the real culprits are as clear as day, there's no surprise at all about that. so usually in situations where writers decide to go down this path where there's very little surprises, it's in the skillful threading of the story sequences that really makes the biggest impact.

which has been really mediocre in this drama to say the least.

i get that the story meant to focus or revolves itself around the two male leads, namely Lee Tae Kyung and Song Woo Young, and the 'development' of their relationship for lack of better terms, i.e. the brokenness/crashing down of their relationship. so the cases to be solved really focused on these two.

however, that is problematic because this is a slow paced drama with the entire storyline almost served to you on a silver platter, as early as the first half of the series. i believe that if the pace is decisively slow, then the developmental building/entanglement/resolution of the cases should also be slow, complex or gradual to build better tension. i guess you can see how i am almost saying that the writers are failing miserably at that.

it's pretty damn obvious to me that this drama severely lacks the beautiful complexities that most well written thriller law dramas have of its genre. i can explain why. it's because the writers not only focused the cases around the two male leads, they also decided to focus on:

1) the sub-cases that use supporting casts that appear or are mentioned about often but actually do not contribute much to the advancement of the story, unless to keep the links to the big picture therefore end up being repetitive and highly predictable.

2) the resolving of cases between a small number of working teams who are mainly focused on cases only and not shown much personalities at all outside of it. LOL! booooringgggg.

i also feel that it's quite a problem that both the leads cooperating to seek justice are people of law (a prosecutor and a lawyer), so there's not much push and pull dynamics that happen, compared to if the other partner is someone from the police force, i.e. a detective.

don't even get me started on the hints of romance, bloody hell. the pair is such a good looking couple, and what a missed opportunity it has been not to explore so much more.

they are presented to the story as exes, but we hardly have a meaningful flashback of the time they shared together. and all the moments sharing how they still care for each other are very minimal. there's only two meaningful skinship moments between them, 1) was when she wanted to lift up his shirt to check on his injury when he keeps declining to admit (well not really, since his hands were too fast to block her), and 2) when he hugged her after a huge tragedy in her life.

gosh, i wish they explored more. i always love a good visual couple, LOL.

and i'd finally end with the characterization of Lee Tae Kyung. i read one of the reviews saying that he's probably the weakest link in the drama. well i thoroughly enjoy the lead actor who plays him, so i am going to try to be at least objective here. come to think of it, i might painfully admit that he comes across really flat, blerghh.

and i have to say i am kinda disappointed with this character because with it being so controlled and subdued, there's not much that Choi Jin Hyuk can show within his usually full-on acting range like it was spectacularly evident in Tunnel. this is when i realise that you can have a world class actor playing a character but if the range is very limited, then not even him can save it LOL.

also between the two villains Song Woo Young and Tak Soo Ho, i actually preferred Tak Soo Ho more but it's really a shame that he's only the secondary villain in this. this guy's a straight up psychopath but he doesn't get as much screen time to show how brutally evil he can get, rather they only makes him come across as demented and creepy when he could have delivered much greater impact. i wished they had given him better opportunity to shine like Vincenzo's writers did to Jang Jun Woo's character played by Ok Taec Yeon.

all in all, highly recommendable mainly for Choi Jin Hyuk's eternal gorgeousness, LMAO~