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.

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.

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.

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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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.