Nice Guy ^___^

Nice Guy

Cast :
Song Joong Ki, Moon Chae Won, Park Si Yeon, Lee Kwang Soo, Kim Tae Hoon, Lee Sang Yeob, Lee Yoo Bi

Language : 
Korean 


Synopsis :
Smart and promising medical student Kang Maru has been in love all his life with his slightly older next-door neighbor Han Jae Hee, a television reporter. He is an adoring boyfriend and she always considered Maru her home. But when her situation takes a turn for the worse and Jae Hee becomes desperate to escape poverty, she meets a man who changes everything—a rich CEO who introduces her to a life of comfort. So she turns her back on Maru, choosing money over love.

The brutal betrayal leaves Maru fractured - not just angry, but a completely changed man. A few years later, Maru is now 30 years old and works as a bartender and gigolo, no longer a "nice guy." He then meets Seo Eun Ki, a young chaebol heiress who's being groomed to take over her father's conglomerate. Eun Ki is a cold and calculating, business-savvy, and raised by her father to never show emotion to anyone. But Maru intrigues her, and she becomes curious until she can’t stop thinking about him.

Maru decides to take advantage of her as a pawn in his plans for revenge, and Eun Ki falls in love with him, not knowing that he’s using her to get back at his ex Jae Hee, who happens to be Eun Ki's young, gold-digging stepmother. Just when Maru is beginning to genuinely care for Eun Ki, she finds out the truth and they break up. But a car accident causes Eun Ki to lose her memory, and she enters Maru's life again.

Remarks :
I’m actually impressed with this drama. Knowing fully what kind of drama, a Korean melodrama is. This drama is hands down a masterful brilliant work of art that can take its place in the pantheon of great K-melodramas of all time. Its flaws are overcome by exquisite directing and excellent acting, and even the stretches in the script have built in room for the narrative to breathe and form into a cohesive structure. Isn’t it incredible to watch a melodrama that is so stunningly restrained in the pathos and unwilling to fall back on the hysteria? So this is what it’s like for a melodrama to cut it with the slapping, the hitting, the screaming, the tossing things, the general gloss of male rage and female backstabbing. Nice Guy doesn’t rely on any of that, and instead relies on complexities to drive the conflict.

Nice Guy was bolstered by having some of the best directing I’ve seen in years. The expertise and finesse is all there in how seamlessly we are carried from scene to scene without realizing the transitions of camera angles and cut aways are happening. If you turn off the sound, watching this in silence will truly highlight what a visual feast it is. Quiet but so impactful. I wasn’t that taken with the OST, but I do love one, the first part with Xia Junsu. Thankfully it never strayed over the line, but I often wonder what this drama could be if even the music was less in-your-face and more quietly powerful the way the directing was. I’ve already thrown accolade after accolade to all the actors on the across-the-board stellar acting by the cast so there is no need to repeat myself. I wouldn’t say that the three leads deserve awards for blowing me away, but all three definitely took their previous personal best acting performance and one-upped themselves. I find awards all a popularity contest anyway, and the true value of delivering a great performance is for the actor to feel personal validation and to take away a genuine improvement in their skills. Nice Guy ‘s definitely a keeper that I’ll heartily recommend to anyone looking for a great melodrama fix.