City Hunter
The Year 1983, a terrible terror attack happens: The Rangoon bombing. Shortly afterwards five officials, who assume that North Korea is behind the bombing, decide to do a secret revenge attack. They recruit some of their best soldiers and sent them to North Korea to kill military leaders. However during the operation the officials decide to back out from the illegal mission. To sweep the operation under the carpet they give the command to kill their own people. When the elite troop returns, their own allied u-boat opens fire. Everyone dies, except Lee Jin-Pyo. He swears revenge to the five officials who planned the mission. So Lee Jin-Pyo hides in the Golden Triangle in Southeast Asia. He also brings up Lee Yoon Sung, a son of his dead comrade. He trains Yoon Sung to fight to execute his revenge together. After years Lee Jin-Pyo and Lee Yoon Sung return to South Korea to finally revenge their dead comrades.
Which Cities Did He Hunt?
City Hunter (Hancinema, Wikipedia) is a revenge action-romance drama, which focuses on Lee Yoon Sung’s struggle between revenge and a regular life. He tries to avoid relationships to avoid bringing loved ones in danger. Of course he fails miserable. Additionally he slowly finds out that his foster-father didn’t tell the whole truth about his past.
After watching the first episode I was really fired up. The episode did a great job in setting up the story, was quite action packed and promised a great, gritty and furious revenge drama. A revenge where they endlessly fight, make their lives more and more miserable, end up in a filthy prison cell where they kill each other with toothbrushes. Well the second episode quickly destroyed my hope for that, because the show started with its romance part and side stories. Actually the romance and other side stories are a big part of the content, glued together with the revenge plot. Not that the show is bad after the first episode, but I just hoped for something different. All in all it’s a show with well paced story-telling and likeable characters.
Apparently the series is based on a manga. Well, I haven’t read it and can’t judge how strongly it is related. My guess is that is quite loosely based and that.
What my final verdict? Well I enjoyed watching City Hunter, despite my hope for a different kind of show. However I’m not sure to whom I would recommend it. For an ‘action-thriller’ oriented audience there is probably a little too much ‘romance’ in there. For a soap opera replacement is to ‘serious’. Probably you should just watch the first two to three episodes to get an impression =).
Star-O-Meter: 
(3.5/5)
Trailers, again without subtitles =(. Well the trailers are so generic anyway.