Butterfly

Butterfly delivers a decent story and strong performances, particularly from Daniel Dae Kim, Reina Hardesty, and standout Korean actors like Kim Tae-hee, Park Hae-soo, and Kim Ji-hoon, who bring authenticity, emotional depth, and nuance to their roles. The production values are polished and cinematic, blending premium K-Drama aesthetics with an American-style spy thriller. However, the action sequences fall flat. Fight choreography is slow and overly cautious, gunfire sounds weak and toy-like, and knife and baton impacts lack any real weight. Environmental destruction is underwhelming, and stunts often feel telegraphed, breaking immersion in high-stakes moments. Additionally, some of the non-Korean actors deliver performances that feel stale or flat, which weakens the overall impact of certain scenes. Had the action been faster, more dynamic, and paired with heavier, impactful sound design - including Korean-style cinematic fight sequences Butterfly could easily have scored 8-10/10. As it stands, it's worth watching for the story and strong performances, but weak action, pacing, and inconsistent acting from non-Korean actors hold it back from reaching its full potential. So with that being said, I give Butterfly a generous 6.5/10 because, while the story and some performances were solid, the slow action, weak sound effects, and uneven performances from non-Korean actors kept it from being truly enjoyable.

This East-meets-West spy thriller looks gorgeous and delivers good storytelling! Daniel Dae Kim & the Korean cast (Kim Tae-hee, Park Hae-soo, Kim Ji-hoon) absolutely shine with authentic performances. Production values are a standout, considering the writing swings from, good-to-average, throughout the series.

BUT... the action is painfully slow, gunshots sound like toy cap guns, pacing drags, ending flops hard, and some non-Korean actors (looking at you, Piper Perabo) deliver lines like yesterday's toast, with the writers repeating the same lines, over and over -

"That's David! That's David! That's David!"

**6/10** - Worth watching for the story & standout performances, but weak action keeps it grounded. Could've been an 8-9 with better choreography, less plot holes, better writing!

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Daniel saw kim is my eomma favorite actor so we binged watched the series All Korean actors did great it had amazing action scenes but felt like it was little all over the place it took long to get to from point A to Point B at times and the ending was a flop. Could have done better with it I think.

Butterfly sells itself as a slick spy thriller, but what it delivers is a B-movie dressed up in Prime Video gloss. The central flaw? We're told David is an elite agent, yet he has no go-bag, no secured safe houses, not even something as simple as a forged passport. Tradecraft is nonexistent-he feels less like an operative and more like a suburban dad caught in cosplay.

The action sequences are equally hollow. Where Bourne uses pens, magazines, and taxis with gritty improvisation, Butterfly gives us generic car chases, knife fights with too many flourishes, and Rebecca's constant smirks that drain every ounce of tension. It's all style, no substance-action scenes that look choreographed rather than lived in.

Psychologically, the show fumbles again. Jason Bourne was haunted, layered, believable. David and Rebecca? One is inconsistent paranoia, the other a "smirking teen assassin" stereotype. The emotional beats play more like daytime soap melodrama with pistols than a gripping espionage story.

World-building is paper thin. There's no convincing spy infrastructure, no sense of a global intelligence machine. Just pretty backdrops, some melodrama, and occasional gunfire. Instead of espionage with stakes, we get "family therapy sessions with prop weapons."

If Jason Bourne is an apex predator of spy thrillers, Butterfly is Jason in Psycho with a potato gun and a sulking sidekick. A waste of film-yawn-worthy action, ill-prepared agents, and a smirk so overused it should have its own credit in the cast list.

I watch a lot of Korean TV and movies. So I was predisposed to watching this show. I'm only halfway through, and this review assumes the story and pacing continues to the end

I am really enjoying this show. The story is intriguing, it unfolds at an even pace, the cinematography is fantastic and the acting is phenomenal.

Why am I giving this an 7 instead of a 10? Because the only missing element is the action. It's fairly weak, which is surprising because Korean action is much better than this. Lots of jump cuts that show the result, but none of the work. But I just read that this is an American production, which makes more sense, since I never found American TV action all that great.

It's too bad, because I am familiar with a ton of the Korean actors and I know they've worked on physical shows/movies before. Nevertheless, this show is still worth watching.