Word of Honor

The screenwriter is a genius. You will be surprised to see how she plays with words, how she gives it deep meanings, and that she can tell a very deep story even with a simple sentence. Her name is Xiao Chu. I will definitely remember this name.

I was almost throwing up when I watched the first episode. It was confusing and the acting was too exaggerated. I wanted to give up but was persuaded by a friend to give it a chance. I fast forward a lot to get to the parts that I found ,ore interesting. I am glad I gave it a chance as the actors that came after were much better. I enjoyed the interactions between Wen Kexing and Guxiang. They were boss and maid, and yet get along more like brother and sister. Guxiang's wedding was a scene that deeply touched me. We KeXing did everything to make it a beautiful wedding, however, the so-called "righteous" people made it a killing field. It's so similar to the world we live in. Unscrupulous people work to destroy other's reputation and hard work for their own pleasure and use "justice" and "righteousness" to camouflage their own interests. It's worth reflecting the plot of this drama.

I often just watch highlights of a series, especially Chinese series cause many them of have such a large number of episodes with a lot of filters. However, each episode in this series is quite dense with plot details and forshadowings. Actions scenes has good choreography and stays true to its genres. The two leads portray their character spendidly, especially through their eyes and microexpressions. They also performed most of the action scenes themselves. The supporting charactors also have interesting backstories. Dispite the limited budget, the crews has delivered a high quality series with a lot of hearts in it.

I think this drama is the best adaptation of Chinese novels in recent years. It interprets the love of two boys in the period of ancient Chinese knights. The two mutual salvation dramas contain many classic expressions of love in China and the world. There is no direct expression of love in the play, but the love expressed by the eyes gestures of the two actors can make you want to stop.

There are several points for an 9 star review but first, I'll explain why not a 10 star review: because of the camera work and sound design. I don't know if the director (or directors?) had a not so great camera team operator because in some scenes you can see the way the camera shakes and it's not consistent with the feeling of the scene. Although I understand why the sound design needed to be covered by the BGM because of the loud exterior sounds of other productions that happened in the same place and at the same time, there's no enough digetic sound to give more dimensionality to the overall picture. With dubbing it's another issue that I don't have right to make criticism.

However, why 9 stars? Because even though it was a low budget production, it doesn't feel like one. It's obvious the production knew their weaknesses and their strengths and exploited both of them.

The first thing I applaud is the script. The script writer was debuting in this work, and already had done a excellent job of conveying the substancial (romantic) relationship of ZZS and WKX. It is not at all surprising that both GJ and ZZH were able to demonstrate good acting skills here, because the script worked on their behalf.

The second thing is the plot, although it falls into varied exhibition dialogues (understandable, because after all it is in television format), is interesting enough to be able to continue watching and waiting for the next episode. Besides, the cast doesn't fall behind; although not everyone is at the level of the skill of ZZH or the other veteran actors, they stand in their own enough to show a convincing performance.

And the last thing: the fight scenes. In the first episodes those aren't too great because of the edited slow motion, but later in the ongoing episodes, the fights have improved a lot, so much so that they give me adrenaline.

From a point of a viewer who has not seen many Chinese dramas, this series is quite recommended to enter the world of wuxia stories. Please love this serie! By the way, you can find the free episodes 1-10 at Youku channel.