Butterfly

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.

Honestly I didn't have too high expectations going in. But it turned out better than expected.

A little slow at times but. Most of the actors did a good job. The reason I was hesitant, was because of Piper Perabo. Don't care much for her at all. So I kinda tried to ignore the scenes she was in 😅 Also glad that the guy playing her son was really weak character/actor. They could've done a better casting on him.

So to summarize all in all it was watchable and somewhat entertaining.

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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The series was ok.

Pros: -story is really well thought of, I like some of the twists an in general it is a unique experience -good pacing throughout the series 6 episodes -the visuals are nice and prop usage is also likable

Cons: -the action is just so so. The feeling of good action just doesn't come. Could be because of the choreographies or because the actors aren't feeling it -it's wierd that sometimes you get gore, like blood spurting out of people and another time it seems like they don't want to show it -the ending is really wierd -the Charakter Features of the daughter are just cliche and I hate it

I enjoyed the first 3 episodes and some parts of the last 3.

It's still a can watch but not better then a 7.

Butterfly is much like every other spy/assassin/espionage thriller out there. Although the acting was really good throughout, with great locations, the directing and writing let the storyline down dramatically. It could have been so much more entertaining and engrossing. With predictable plot-twists and the usual plot holes (perhaps great voids) the writers didn't really do a good job with what they had to offer and most of it was borrowed from other TV shows and movies. The opening dialogue of the pilot (ep 1) was copied straight from The Matrix, for example. 5/10 is more generous that what I should be awarding this show, mainly because of the poor job the directors did.