Athena: Secret Agency

An agent (Woo-sung Jung) is transferred to the National Anti-Terrorist Service and must stop a secret organization from committing acts of terror. This series (20 episodes, 60 minutes each) is a spin-off of the "Iris" series (with different actors) and is similar in terms of its budget, high production values, and slick presentation. The difference, however, is that the first few episodes set things up as a brainless, high octane action flick with generic scriptwriting, bland scoring, and weak characters. It severely lacks the dramatic intensity that made "Iris" so addictive, but the major positive here is the action, which provides some excellent shootouts that are on par with (or even better than) most theatrical films. It's amazing what they did with a mere $17 million. Soo Ae and Ji-ah Lee provide some exciting "girls with guns" action early on, but grow passive afterward, which is kinda disappointing. The pacing is blistering fast thru the first 10 episodes but runs out of gas during the second 10 episodes when the action becomes sparse and of a much lesser quality. It's almost like the director got lazy and phoned it in, because things actually get pretty damn boring at times. This would have been awesome if it had ended after episode 10.