Review – Duel

You have to be in the mood for this type of drama.  It’s an action/thriller/mystery and it succeeds in each of those categories.  A middle aged cop with an adorable young daughter, dying of something-or-other, goes to extremes to save his child after she is kidnapped and held for ransom.  He tracks down a suspect – only to find himself face to face with two identical men.  Which of them is guilty of the crime?  Or are they co-conspirators?  He manages to arrest one… unfortunately, the one he captures has total amnesia, but swears up and down that he is innocent.  Add to this an alluringly ambitious prosecutor who means to get to the top if she has to chop everyone’s legs off to climb over them, and a young woman attempting to solve the mystery of her mother’s secret experiments… and you’ve got a winning drama.

Could there be a cooler opening sequence?  I just loved it!  The gothic piano, the chorus, the eery shots of handsome nudes morphing creepily into one another…

It’s one twist and turn after the other, with outstanding car chases, shoot-outs, evil big pharma companies, secret laboratories, and mafia.  Yang Se-Jong pulls double duty playing the twins – one malicious and deadly, the other baffled and determined to prove his innocence – and his face is quite mesmerizing in its ability to convey emotions.

But Kim Jung-Eun stole the show, in my opinion, as the gray-scale prosecutor… sailing smoothly between self-serving bitch to genuine pursuit of justice.  She was magnificent, complicated, and pretty much rocked my socks every time she was on screen.  You’ll love to hate her.

Overall Rating – 9/10.  No One With A Secret Laboratory Is Up To Any Good.