[2009] IRIS Lee Byung Hun and Kim Tae Hee *Updated 10/10/08*

There's elements of 24, Alias, Femme Nikita in Episode 2. And even the same kind of dread that we see in the Dark Night. There's little snark and self-satisfaction during their initation into the NSS. Instead, there's dread.

There's 2 main directors working this project, and sometimes I feel there are definite breaks in style during the episode. Obviously a lot of it involves lighter, funny moments, but that seems consistent with Kim Kyu Tae's work, finding interesting camera angles that suit the situational comedy. Some of the action bits here are a bit more conventional.

Episodes 2 reasserts why LBH earns the big bucks. That was quite possibly the best kissing scene I've ever seen in K-drama. Sensual, soulful, dangerous, emotional, conflicted, pure. The way at one point, it seems Kim Tae Hee's neck falls back, as she seems to surrender into kissing Lee Byung Hun. The way he smirks ruefully after she slaps him, and then kiss her once more forcefully not aggressively. The way she walks out and he puts one arm back to think about what just happened, to think about whether what happened was actually a good thing.

I think they broke some K-drama record in main leads falling in love. But this is where LBH earns the big bucks. The sheer power of that scene enables us to believe that they're "together" by just barely an episode and a half.

Much credit also goes to Choi Wan Kyu. For the first time in years, we have a script from him that doesn't feel merely like a first-draft pastiche of American TV and bad 80s action flicks. The writing is disciplined, adult, very well paced, while retaining the comedic and romantic elements we associate with K-drama.

The romantic aspect in Iris is strong. Kim Kyu Tae also shot World That They Live In, and though the writing is not sharpened for relationship nuances, there's a quiet, warm style that is shared with the drama. I can't hide my enthusiasm for Kim Kyu Tae getting the director's role here. He really understands the different film grammar between genres. For example, he uses a lot of handicam (perhaps too much) for the thriller bits. But during the romantic bits, he locates the characters within the overall frame of the picture, and he knows how to slow it down and quietly let us in on their intimate moment. You guys know what I'm talking about if you've seen World That They Live In. But he also did the same thing for A Love to Kill -- if you recall all the times that Rain and Mina kiss or have that stolent moment, there's a lot of filmmaking technique used to properly capture that intimate moment that you rarely see with other directors working in K-drama.

The romantic triangle is beautifully done here. Part of Iris's natural strength is that because you do have 2 film stars in the male lead role, you can kinda do the buddy bits and the triangle bits in narrative shorthand. They'll take care of the emotional work for you. By the end of episode 2, you have a triangle and you have a couple in love and it feels natural.

The other thing I love about Iris is that, like the first Bourne Identity movie, it's likely that the majority of this drama will take place during the autumn or winter. There's a lot of comedic moments, but it already feels like melancholy and fatalism will eventually take over the show. In effect, these are the last days of light before the clouds gather and sigh the sun away.

Seems like in episode 4 we are going back to the present, means after LBH got shot and blown up in the first episode. Definitly going to watch it.

So far, Iris had been lucky in juxtaposing the spy thriller bits with the romantic/rom-com elements. However, in episode 3, it stops the show. At the end of the day, Iris works only if the viewer is invested in the missions, the conspiracies, the murky, gritty sadness of this life. From that must come the romance.

The kissing scene in Episode 2 worked because we were just exposed to a scene where Choi Sung Hee presided over the torture of Hyun Joon and Sa Woo. We realize that she was instrumental to their inclusion in the NSS. These elements inform the argument they have and their kissing scene. And it's an important contrast with the violence and confusion that began with the episode.

However, here, the first half of the show is basically Their Vacation Trip interleaved with TOP on his killing spree. It's off putting, because Their Vacation has little to do with the mayhem spliced in it. Their scenes feel inappropriate. Maybe if they fit this in later in the episode or in another episode, after we've fully integrated TOP's formal introduction or the ongoing interest of the President in the NK's nuclear program or -- most importantly -- we review the revelation that Hyun Joon has amnesia.

FWIW, I think handling a full romantic plot is inherently difficult with spy thriller. I thought Rondo made a huge mistake trying to put in an old fashioned romance within an Infernal Affairs-style framework. Even in Time of Dog and Wolf, the romance only reinforced my annoyance at Nam Sang Mi's character, since she became the proverbial damsel in distress. And I imagine Iris will eventually take that route, but hopefully not too soon.

I've been happy with Iris because the show established Choi Sung Hee as an alpha female character. She is not only their boss, but she is also chilly to the emotional and ethical ramifications of their work. That is, she seems unmoved by the fact that NSS could very well be as bad as the bad guys. Moreover, she drinks more than they do (there's a undercurrent of alcoholism here BTW -- she's a legitimate hard drinker here and she seems to use it instead of reacting emotionally) She plays the negotiator here. She runs a lot of the missions.

Aside from that, the thriller part of Episode 3 was a smashing success. Yes, there's too much panning. And I thought the music was too pervasive. But TOP's entrance was easily as brutal as you seen on an episode of 24. The way everything was shot tight and with a cold efficiency recalled the last two James Bond films. In fact, this is even more violent than Choi Wan Kyu's the Lobbyist. There's blood sprayed in various places, and the violence are choreographed with an emphasis on cracked necks, bullets to the forehead, etc. No fooling -- this would get a MA in the States.

The Vacation scenes -- taken in isolation of the episode's framing story -- was really well done. Again, this is the director of World That They Live In, and like that show, he uses longer takes to allow actors to interact within the frame of a scene. They are allowed to pause, then respond. And we are allowed to observe them as a couple without so much manipulation or excessive use of music. While it's true that there's a lot of standard "Lovers in Japan" stuff here, the show does a really good job depicting them as adults. He is a goofball (BTW, it should be noted that we haven't seen Hyun Joon as a true assassin.) She is, again, a hard drinker, a neat freak, a lot less sentimental or emotional. . There's a really nice scene where she is expecting a gift from him in the restaurant. When the outcome isn't what she expected, she pouts and snaps at him. He tries to make up and he succeeds. The whole sequence makes us believe in them as a real, normal couple, because the director allows us to simply watch them, and allows the actors to react according to their own rhythms.

One of my favorite scenes is when Sa Woo reacts to the two getting together, Hyun Joon talking about getting married and Seung Hee half agreeing on it. The director does a lot of closeups of Sa Woo's reactions, and you can easily see both his hurt and his regard for his friends. There's no music or Sa Woo dialogue to lead us to feel sorry for him. We just do, because Jung Joon Ho beautifully acts that part.

I really enjoyed the church scene. First off, we can see that Choi Sung Hee is a true hard ass when she's talking to the scientist. Manipulating, using guilt, etc. Whatever to get him to come over to their side. Second, the conversation between the scientist and Hyun Joon foreshadows what is about to come for HJ. Remember, up to this point, he's still a n00b in the NSS. He hasn't recovered his memory and realized that NSS has been involved with him before. He doesn't know how bad people get at NSS. He hasn't even been warned about how he could become a monster. He walked into a situation without realizing the consequences.

The nuclear weapon plot is intriguing, since it cals into question what agenda the President himself has. Much like an episode of 24, we start to see a layer cake of interests, agendas, and so on. Hopefully Episode 3 was just a functional bump and then they can fully commit to Boom Boom Pow fun with Episode 4.

I flat out loved Episode 4. The problem with most American spy shows is that they often don’t spend enough time going through the preparation, execution, and then failure of the mission. The 2nd half of Episode 4 played a little bit like Michael Mann, in that there’s a lot of mundane procedural stuff. Even if it’s not really that realistic, it establishes place, mood and texture within the narrative of a mission.

Above all, it makes you more aware how LBH’s character is set up to fail. There’s no real good reason why he had to go lone wolf here. There’s no true exit strategy. There’s no real plan. For all those things — and because we already know the outcome — the viewer becomes anxious over the agenda of the vice director. The Choi Seung Hee character is important here, because she — who is in charge of direction missions — immediately picks up that this is no way to execute a mission.

I don’t really see this as Western vs. Eastern, per se. Korean cinema, in general, really sticks out to me compared to Chinese or Japanese cinema, because a lot of the visual idioms and pacing (such as the behind-the-person camera shot) are reminiscent of 70s American cinema (which is great.) The first 2 episodes of Kim Kyu Tae’s drama “Love to Kill” play a little bit like a David Fincher. It’s not surprising.

I don't really buy into IRIS is a rehash of 24 and Alias. The Bourne movies sure . . . but then again, Doug Liman's Bourne Identity was very, very different from Paul Greengrass's Bourne movies. (Greengrass was the dude who made the psuedo-docudrama shaky cam idiom popular in action scenes. If you've seen his docudramas Bloody Sunday or United 93, nobody is better at simulating chaos.) One reason why I like IRIS is that elements of it recalls what Doug Liman was doing with Bourne Identity, which was to place the standard spy thriller in autumn/winter and make everything wet. That changes how you watch the spy thriller, because it introduces strong tones of dread, melancholy, loneliness, and so on. Iris's Hungary scenes had a bit of that.

If anything, Iris is more like how action movies were done before CGI. The director does a good job laying the terrain of the mission before the execution of it. Because you see LBH methodically going through the scouting, planning, as well as the weapon's preparation, he doesn't seem like a "superspy." Rather, he seems like a well-trained Special Forces soldier, which is what he is. But that also makes what's missing -- his team -- so conspicious. You think to yourself "why the hell is he going out this alone?!?" And of course, it's because he IS supposed to fail. You only get that if the director emphasizes a procedural element in the story. Moreover, when LBH's character is escaping, there isn't a lot of gun pyrotechnics or Chuck Norris-style fighting. He's simply trying to run away -- but he's also in a ridiculous amount of pain and he can't think straight. As he's walking away, you notice he's going pale and his decision making is slowing down. It's all simply done, but the director does a good job establishing that LBH's character is in big, big trouble, and the story matter of factly presents this. In that sense, this part of the story is less like a typical spy thriller and more like something that you'd see in a Western. The gunman is shot; he's bleeding to death; he's in a strange place.

I think the story still needs to work on balancing its action bits and its lovey-dovey bits. It’s conventional, but necessarily so. (Can’t realistically do a story like Story of a Man or Mawang, even though it would have made a more original story.) The spy bits needs to set up the romance, not the way around.