Heartless City – Review

What a rollercoaster! Heartless City (also translated Cruel City) made my temperature gone crazy. How can I describe that drama? Just by saying the title I feel tensions all around me. I’m ready to move to the side to avoid a punch in the face coming from an unknown enemy. Yes that’s how far the drama took me! But I avoided being punched in the face so many times that I ended up being hit in the heart. Deeply hit. So hard, that it’s still bleeding. Can someone please take me to the hospital? I’m feeling bad but I like it. Doctor is it contagious? 

This post will be a bit special. More than a halfway review it will be an overall review of the drama. I just completed it and I wanted (had?) to talk about it. Maybe I should’ve put this post in another category since the term “currently” doesn’t stick well to the situation but don’t ask me to change things right now I’m half dead right now! Of course I could have found a moment to talk about Heartless City while watching it but I was too busy trying to catch my breath. Couldn’t do both at the same time. Such a shame.

I finished the drama within a week which is descent considering his high (toxic) level of addiction. My heart rate was over the normal range and my eyes were bulging all through the drama. A crazy addiction I’m telling you. I don’t know why I waited so long to start this drama (aired in 2013 on JTCB). I guess sometimes I can also have bad ideas but you know the saying: better late than never! 

Heartless City is a drama full of twists so much that it’s almost unhealthy. It’s the first post army role for Jung Kyung Ho. The last memory I have of him is his adorkable character in the family drama Smile You back in 2009. His role of Doctor’s Son here is far from the average guy trying to live a normal. We’re in another sphere, an absolute different universe. 

Here’s a short synopsis of the drama: After the death of her mother, Jung Shi-hyun (Jung Kyung Ho) grow up in an orphanage. After running away from there, he works as a drug courier going by the nickname of “Doctor’s Son”. When the cop Lee Kyung-mi (Go Na Eun) dies on the field while undercover, her colleague and boyfriend, Ji Hyung Min (Lee Jae Yoon) is determinate do everything in his power to arrest the prime suspect of the murder: Doctor’s Son. In order to help him, Lee Kyung-mi’s little sister, Yoon Soo Min (Nam Guy-Ri) will accept to go undercover to pick up where her sister left off. She will eventually fall for Doctor’s Son and will have to survive in a world with no rules and no reason. (Source: Wikipedia)

To be completely frank, I had no expectations when I started Heartless City that’s probably why I took me so long to start it. But to be accurate, I had absolute no idea whatsoever of what that drama would look like. I was ready to see fights, killing, blood, violence and passion ‘cause in my head that’s how things are in a criminal world. And none of those elements were missing in Heartless City. It was dirty and with no pity! The drama serves me gorgeous fights (parenthesis: personal note to Doctor’s Son: Are you trying to kill? Stop using your jacket as weapon while fighting it makes me melt completely!), brutal killings and passion. But more than passion, I think it was profound desires that lead most of the characters.  

* Doctor’s Son’s ultimate desire is to keep his ‘family’ (Jin Sook and Hyun Soo respectively played by Kim Yoo Mi and Yoon Hyun Min) safe and sound. He grew up orphan. Meeting and being able to rely on Jin Sook and Hyun Soo somehow brought news aspects to his life. Despite the fact that those two don’t get along pretty well, they manage to keep peace for the sake of Doctor’s Son. That’s how far the love for each other goes.  

  

* Jin Sook is Doctor’s Son’ auntie at least that how he calls her and his feelings for her are strictly of that order. If you ask Jin Sook about that her opinion will be slightly different! They protected each other. If his feelings are clear hers are ambiguous. It’s not clearly said all through the drama, but we can easily guess that she developed love feelings for Doctor’s Son. The latter met Jin Sook while living with his mother in their poor neighbourhood. A sweet and unfailing but still confusing bond unites them. If one thing is for sure is that Jin Sook can’t leave this criminal world because of Doctor’s Son. Basically she can’t live without him! More than family, he’s her lifeline. She knows he won’t let her down no matter what (and indeed he rescued her more than once in the drama regardless of the danger). Beside her profound attachment to Doctor’s son, Jin Sook is someone leads by money and who constantly seeks for recognition in everything she does. Beside the drug business, she made herself a name by being the director of the “finest” hostesses bar. She had a tough life (back in the neighbourhood where she met Doctor’s Son) and isn’t ready to risk everything. Even if that means that she could finally be free that probably also means that she could go back as low as where she started.  

* Hyun Soo is Doctor’s son’s best friend. They met in prison and never went apart sincethen. As for Jin Sook, Doctor’s Son is ready to do anything for his one and only friend. And Hyun Soo knows it. So beyond any logic, beyond all his doubts and what his guts can tell him he trusts Doctor’s son. More than friends, they are like brothers. There’s no big description about his personnal life in the drama. All we read between the line is that Hyun Soo wants somehow to be a drug lord and that certainly explains his conflicts with Jin Sook as they both aim the same goal although they’re on the same team.   

 

* Ji Hyung Min was deeply in love with Lee Kyung-mi. When she’s shoot dead on the field, a part of him left with her. I feel like she was the one who was giving him a sort of balance in his quite unbalanced life: his brother has a brain damage due to an overdose. He doesn’t consider nor respect his father since that incident because for Hyun Min, he’s the only responsible. After Kyung-mi’s death, he will forget everything and will cross the line of ethics many times. Revenge is what will maintain him alive. His only desire is to catch Doctor’s son, no matter what it takes, no matter what or who he has to go through. Despite my ultimate and unconditional love to Doctor’s Son (and by consequence my illogic but stubborn angriness to those against him), I did feel bad for Ji Hyun Min most many times. I understood his grief, his pain. I also understood that he’s someone who deeply hunger for justice. He wants to kill Doctor’s Son but moreover he wants to put down all drug cartels, mostly because of his brother but also because he wants to live in a country freed from drug. Maybe it’s a sweet illusion but one’s need a goal and that’s a praiseworthy one. I was as much frustrated as him every time he arrested someone and that someone was released 2 hours later. Gosh how then can you still respect your hierarchy when you pertinently know that most of them are corrupted (your father included)? Hard. What I liked about that character is that we saw him grow up. If there’s one thing I dislike in dramas is wasting a character in the sense of, if there’s a room for a character to evolve and grow up don’t just waste that possibility, you screenwriters all over the world!

I was expecting to see some changes in Ji Hyung Min from his reactions to his feelings and thank God there were no dashed hopes. The development I probably like the most about Ji Hyung Min is his relation and contacts to people. If right after the Lee Kyung-mi’s death he was like a machine, going on without any consideration for anyone little by little he changed mainly through his relationship at first awkward then protective with Yoon Soo-min.

* You can’t judge a book by its cover. Behind her fragile, delicate, skinny appearance Yoon Soo-min is a fierce fighter, fighting to get revenge! But I guess when you have a goal, you go beyond your own limits, fears and doubts. And that what she did. She went undercover without too many thoughts seeing that solution as the only way to pay back that sister who took care of her no matter what. I can’t lie, she really walked on my nerve once or twice (which isn’t much really) but that didn’t last because I understood quite well what 

she was going through. You can’t enter that world, naively without getting your fingers burnt along the way. She learned that at her expense. Like Ji Hyung Min, it’s a character that grew up right before our eyes. From a candid girl, with no precise ambition, she grew up into someone fierce and determinate. She saw the world from his most dark side but also saw that love can be found in the most hopeless places (She will fall for Doctor’s Son and will love Jin Sook like a big sister).Ji Hyun Min as well as Yoo Soo-min realized that nothing is either white or black, life is made of nuances.

I had serious doubts about Nam Guy-Ri being though enough to be credible. I even had doubts about her being just able to deliver the right feelings at the right moment. But surprisingly she was involved, strong and most of all credible. That gives some kind of hope for many idols turned actors but that’s another debate I know! 

* A character I haven’t talked about yet: Moon Duk Bae a.k.a Safari (Choi Moo Sung).Cruel, bad, intense he came to Seoul to ruin (I use ‘ruin’ when ‘kill’ is more appropriate) one person: Doctor’s Son (yeah the whole city is at his back!). He plays a central role in the drug deals and used to play a important role in Doctor’s son’s life. Indeed as said before, after the death of his mother Doctor’s Son grew up with Jin Sook. But also with Safari! The latter is the one who came up with the nickname of ‘Doctor’s Son’. Clearly their relation is beyond the usual one of simple enemies. There’s something else lying and we see it subtlety along the drama. Safari’s character is complex, elusive and therefore very interesting. He made my teeth chattering many time but also made me smile, supposing that kind of tension can make you smile at some point. Definitely his fate didn’t leave me indifferent. 

* Finally a centrepiece in te story, Min Hong Ki (Son Chang Min). High-ranking officer in the police, he’s the one who persuaded Ji Hyun Min to come back to the police and fight drug dealers. He has a strong desire to eradicate drug gangs and does everything in his power to make that happen. He plays an important part in the story.

Dark, noir, rough, violent, realistic and captivating, Heartless City is a fascinating portrait of a dark underworld. Drug universe is not exactly what you could call an amusement park! But what I actually liked in Heartless City is the place left to the rest, beside the drug, the violence. We saw people grow up, love in many different ways, trying to survive in a cruel world, we witnessed betrayals but also saw our characters putting their life on the line for things they believed in, either their beliefs were good or bad.

I wasn’t merely good guys against bad ones. There were nuances, degrees of appreciations different interpretations and in a way that’s what brought a plus to Heartless City.  

That drama didn’t give me time to breath but it was a worth ride. How I wish I could lose my breath more often like that!  

**Spoilers Alert ** 

The End:

I’m sure the end has been and will stay the subject of many discussions and speculations but here’s my interpretation it.

How to mentally deal with that kind of end? I screamed at first I mean what else could have I done? Doctor’s Son was lying on the ground, blood coming from all his body. Then I seriously wondered who was going to take responsibility for that? Are you going to make him die for real screenwriter? That when I started to think that maybe, probably, somehow it could be a decoy. It could be! ‘Let’s wait few scenes and we will see him sit in a wheelchair at the hospital, recovering from what was about to be classified as a freaking injustice because you know Doctor’s Son can’t die.’ I convinced myself with that because you know he simply couldn’t die. All through the drama the guy suffer so much and have been hurting so many times that I ended up seeing him as bulletproof. No matter how much you try, you villain bastards you can’t lead him to his demise. But then the hospital scene never came. Never. I saw the ending credits. The names were passing before my eyes and my head got literally empty. I decided that screaming again wasn’t a good option. So drama, you eventually made him die? Seriously? Someone had to be responsible for that!! No joke! I can be rude sometimes and I was ready to insult my laptop but then a scene caught my (almost) puffy eyes.

It was almost too good to be true. It was far better than the wheelchair and the hospital scene I was desperately waiting for. Doctor’s Son is alive. Someone pinch me. OK at 2 am I did it to myself. I knew the screenwriter didn’t want to serve us a bad and unfair end. I was so relieved! My crazy marathon of Heartless City was worth it. Every minute, every second, every breath of it.

Well now let me tell you what lead me to the conclusion that our dear Doctor’s Son isn’t dead. Some would say that I’m only living on illusions, that I feed my mind with speculations that I can’t accept the fact that he’s dead. I’m not. I can take (of course hardly) deaths of valorous heroes (*Spoiler* E.g.: Iris!) and therefore live with a depressing end but not in this case. No reason for Doctor’s Son to die so no reason for me to accept it.

It’s actually that very last scene right after the end credits that kind of forced me  to see things from another perspective. A guy is a white suit, giving us his back, a phone in his hand. Drama, are you trying to tell me something? Oh yes and I got you! 

Ok now let’s go back to the ‘supposed’ end. Soo-min looks at Doctor’s Son and Lee Kyung-mi’s young counterparts. The camera stays on her few seconds, followed right after by the end credits (the ones that got me depressed). We then hear Doctor’s Son voice all through that end credits. If his voice caught my attention what really tickles my curiosity is the hand on the wheel. I’m not going to say that I remember every little details of every scene of every episode of the drama but that hand and that wheel filmed in that angle was definitely not in it. Next to that hand on the wheel, a succession of scenes: moment from the past, fights, Doctor’s Son with Soo-min, Jin Sook, Hyun Soo,…

Scene after scene we relive some events that occur during the drama. That surely meant something. In a way it has. I scratched my head and gosh I realized that it actually it was.  

Right after Doctor’s Son was shot, there were not a single concrete scene with Doctor’s son, except the one where Soo-min full of sadness imagine him congratulating her for being a cop now (really heartbreaking picture especially when his image vanished in the air). If we choose to believe that Doctor’s Son isn’t dead (and that’s the path I choose), at that very exact moment we’re totally clueless. Indeed everything point to the fact that he’s well and truly dead.  But what if we push things a little further (is it really hard to envisage from a drama that came up with so many twists?) and imagine that the hand on the wheel belongs to Doctor’s Son and that there’s more than what see? To make things a little clearer:  

* Images of a road: my interpretation is that Doctor’s Son is on the road that will lead him to a new life, a new start.  

* There’re scenes of the drama passing: they should be called memories or flashbacks.

Doctor’s Son is remembering everything he went through, the persons he had to leave behind, those he lost, the manipulations of the evil Min Hong Ki that lead him to lose more than eight years of his life.

Doctor’s Son alive and therefore pretending to be dead seems logic to me. In one hand, he can’t go back being a regular cop without having to arrest Jin Sook, his only family. He’d probably have to go back to square one as a cop after eight years of undercover. Ouch!                                                                                                                               On the other hand, he can’t stay a drug lord without being chased his whole life by the police and the woman he loves (who’s now a cop). Such a dilemma. What other harrowing option does Doctor’s Son have here except faking his own death? Yeah he could be dead for real but again I don’t believe that’s the case here. I believe this end ias as complex as the drama was all through his run. 

Doctor’s Son alive is actually a good thing. The screenwriter choose not to turn all the drama into a revolting injustice making him die by the hand of that crazy, monstrous, fu**** villain! But if you take things from another side, what such an unjust end for Doctor’s Son. He’s admittedly alive but he lost everything and everyone and has to start all over again alone. Like he was no one. Like he never achieves something incredible. Like he never was there. He has to build a new life on the ashes of his past that’s not healed yet. It’s harsh really.

Of course my theory is purely based on speculations and deductions since I’m not the special confident of the screenwriter, but that’s exactly what an open end is all about right?

**Spoilers Alert end**

I don’t regret at any moment to ever have start Heartless City. The drama, the cast, the acting, the story took my breath away, gave me hard times and prevent me to sleep peacefully. But going all thought that was a pure pleasure and that’s what I’m asking from a drama: to give all kind of emotions!

A last picture, just for the eyes. Needless to say more.