REVIEW: Crash Landing On You
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
Re-watch value: 1 out of 5 stars
Synopsis
*From DramaList*
Tells the story of two star crossed lovers, a South Korean heiress and a North Korean elite who also happens to be an army officer. One day, while paragliding, Yoon Se Ri has an accident caused by strong winds, leading her to crash land in North Korea, where she meets Ri Jung Hyuk, a North Korean army officer, who agrees to help her return to South Korea. Over time, they fall in love, despite the divide and dispute between their respective countries.
Rambling
*beware of spoilers*
I don’t think I’ve seen a South-North Korean romance since The King 2 Hearts back in 2012. (That was excellent by the way, so check that out if you haven’t already.)
Crash Landing on You started on probably the most ludicrous premise: Yoon Se-ri, the CEO of her own luxury apparel and skincare company and the heir-apparent of her father’s conglomerate, goes parasailing as part of a promo shoot and gets caught up in a freak tornado à la Wizard of Oz and crash lands in North Korea. She’s found by the handsome-as-ever Hyun Bin who plays a North Korean soldier Ri Jeong-hyeok at the DMZ.
It’s absolutely preposterous, but so begins the tale of two lovers caught between the famous North-South conflict.
I loved seeing Son Ye-jin in another drama. That last time I saw her was in the captivating Something in the Rain (if you haven’t seen it, RUN, don’t walk). To see her play a character that was really comedic and light and emotional and assertive and all the good things was fabulous.
Hyun Bin is all the good things. He’s so good, he deserves no intro.
I think I was really invested in the story when Se-ri was still in the North, in hiding and going through a series of stressful escape attempts. The stakes were way high, so I thought the action and the whole falling-in-love-under-duress seemed to work. Once she makes it over to South Korea, I had serious doubts that the showrunners knew how to end the show. It felt a little boring? Monotonous? Pandering?
I just couldn’t see how they planned to wrap everything up once they got the whole North Korean crew down to Seoul and living with Se-ri. I guess I just couldn’t suspend my disbelief.
The Jo Chul-kang dude ending up in South Korea on a quest to either kill or kidnap Se-ri back to North Korea was insane to me. The fact that he got shot maybe four times and was good with a back-alley surgery sans general anesthesia while Se-ri got shot just once and was laid up in the hospital basically in a coma after surgery was… inconsistent.
The most eye-rolling happened when our main couple realized they had met before in Switzerland. Jeong-hyeok was there with Seo-dan, and Se-ri went by herself to commit suicide in a beautiful place. Jeong-hyeok’s original song that he played on an upright piano on the banks of a fjord inspired her to keep living, and so the entire romance, it seems, was fated. ::yawn:: To make matters more K-drama, Se-ri memorized the song she heard once and proceeded to play the song in front of Jeong-hyeok, the composer. It was too much.
Now, not everything was doom and gloom. The moments of lightness were splendid. For instance, the episode 12 Memories of the Alhambra callback had me rolling. Hyun Bin playing a video game again? C’mon, there was no way they couldn’t do that fan service. Also, the epic Kim Soo-hyun cameo was ridiculous, Lord. He played a North Korean living undercover in South Korea, but his “cover” was him acting a perfect fool. His heel click while goofing off down the lane was side-splitting.
Somewhere in the middle of all the million goodbyes and tears and promise rings, I became super invested in the secondary romance between Seo-dan and Seung-jun. Geez, it’s an art form when the second male and female leads fall in love in a drama, I swear. The way he spoke to her on the bridge was so cute and vulnerable—important because he’s a total con artist. I couldn’t believe it when he died! I was very distraught, and the only time I cried in the entire show was when Seo-dan’s mother went to visit Jeong-hyeok’s mom to officially call off the engagement. She said something to effect of, “She’s in love with a man. And that man is in love with her, and he loves her more than his own life.” Cue the tears.
Kudos to Seo-dan for deciding she doesn’t want to get married and instead lead a “trendy” life. I respect that. Also, major points go to Seo-dan for exacting revenge for Seung-jun’s collateral damage death by sending all incriminating evidence on Se-ri’s brother and his wife to Se-ri. That clinched the deal for them getting significant jail time for, you know, attempted murder, among so many other things. That pair was so sinister. Their evil machinations reminded me a lot of the Cain and Abel (2009) dynamic (that show stars my forever bias So Ji-sub <3 ).
The episode 16 finale contained some of the most beautiful, picturesque shots of the breathtaking vistas of Switzerland that I have ever seen. It elevated the entire episode to have the camera just pan around our main couple standing next to majestic mountains and lush green hills. I mean, it was stunning. You know who else was stunning? Hyun Bin. OMG, that man looked so damn fine in the finale episode, I had a stank face and hand over my heart.
All in all, this might have been more a wailing mess than I wanted. It hit a few highs, but it was a touch too cheesy for me. God bless, Hyun bin though. That man should live in turtlenecks the way he was serving lewks.
Did you see Crash Landing on You? Tell me your thoughts in the comments below!
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