Bloodhounds

I've been watching kdramas daily for ten years now and there are some incredible kdramas which typically fall apart at the end, or sometimes in the middle. But Bloodhounds is consistently thrilling and gripping throughout. With a simple premise but incredible characters, direction, good action, exciting performances all round, Bloodhounds has everything you could want from an action thriller.

Following two boxers as they form a strong friendship whilst they overcome their struggles against an evil loan shark and his gang. Woo Do-hwan and Lee Sang-Yi carry this kdrama on their strong backs as they team up to overthrow the villainous loan sharks and get vengeance.

I have a love-hate relationship with k-dramas. I like them in general but most times I'm left disappointed.

Usually they start very good. The initial, first second, episodes are really good. Great cinematography, good writing, lots of production value and most of the time a nice concept to build upon. You can always tell that about half or more of the production money went to that one - two episodes. And then....

It all goes downhill. Whatever the initial concept was it will always end up a group of people going against some type of villain. They will sit and talk and eat and plan various unintelligent ways to attack the villain. They will attack but for some reason the villain will escape their grasp. Then the villain will attack and probably kill one or two of them. This back and forth will continue depending on how many episodes the season has and at the end the good guys finally will do what they should have done a dozen episodes back. All the above while the tone of the series will flactuate between very moving scenes and cringy slapstick humor.

This show unfortunately does not escape this pattern. It has its ups and it has its downs.

Special mention to the last two episodes that were awful. It probably would have gotten another star if that wasn't the last taste the show had left me with.

What can I say about this Action/Crime/Thiller Series? It just has the right stuff simply put, the right amounts of what makes an Action/Crime movie like say The Raid 2 great, The Bloodhounds story spans 8 episodes with a total running time of about 9 hrs and there is never a dull moment, it trully has a lot of elements mixed into the story to keep you interested throughout, I say the series in 2 days, could have watched it in 1 night if I didn't have to work in the morning, this series pulls no punches but never goes to extreme levels, as examples of Extremes: The Raid 2 & The Night Comes for Us come to mind, this falls a notch below. On the violence scale like say The Man from Nowhere, but it's 85% Fists Fights and Bats with about 15% Knife Fights, Just Perfection in my opinion, This production crew and writters should immediately start producing Season 2, could even use Different actors like True Detective Series did, After Watching Bloodhounds, Imagine that type of story told in the 1400s,1800s, maybe even 1930s because even the same story type completely changes the feel of everything with the era, This Series struck Solid Gold in My Opinion, Thank You, and Can We please another one.

The show is not as simple as you've seen it from the trailer. It has a little bit more complicated stories and characters, but not too far off. It has brotherhood, bloody fight, mukbang, and above all, it's a fast pace show. The choreography of the fights in this show is also well done. It's just as good as another korean show from Netflix, My name. The martial arts or fight actions scenes in modern korean movies and tv shows are arguably better than any other action movies whether it's from hollywood, or outside of hollywood. They has more realistic fights. It's fast and furious literally. They don't have those showy exaggerated moves that look like choreographed dance. Unfortunately, this show also has those typical cliche moments like My Name especially those tear-jerky ones. That's my biggest pet peeve in korean tv shows and movies. Although there's a sudden change of pace (It was quite a ride until episode 6), and the ending is a bit rushed and shortened, overall, the show is quiet entertaining. The fight scenes are worth visit more than once. I give solid 7.5/10.

Honestly, I've seen people calling it unrealistic but it doesn't matter because the drama keeps you hooked. It's a good drama but the problem is in 5-6 episode they removed the nice characters. Even the female lead left after ep 6 which was annoying I expected more from her. I thought she will take a revenge for her grandfather but she was nowhere to be found. Even the nice characters who died, they didn't show any backstory of what happened to them in the end. The ending was good but how they did not cleared it out to the audience was very annoying. I'm mostly disappointed by the female lead leaving the drama in the middle and they also didn't show what happened to the victim's family who were in danger. That thing is going to bother you. Overall it's a good drama the boxing and the stunts were mind blowing. It will keep you hooked. The bromance in the show was really cute. Amazing acting.