By: Cameron Tyo
May 12th, 2024
Spoiler Alert: This review could contain mild spoilers for the show “Crash Landing on You”
Crash Landing on You is what I consider a romantic comedy set behind a dramatized backdrop. The show ran for sixteen episodes on tvN, eventually becoming streamable on services such as Netflix. The show was written by Park Ji-Eun, who is responsible for writing the script for shows such as Queen of Tears, a K-Drama I’ve seen very recently and is, in fact, the drama that made me interested in this series to begin with. Let me say I was not disappointed.
Now for a quick synopsis of the show: During promotional filming for Yoon Se-ri’s (Son Ye-jin) company’s latest paragliding equipment, Seri, who decides to test the paraglider herself, gets into the path of a tornado, which intercepts the original course of the flight, causing her to crash land into a militant zone in North Korea. Here, she meets Ri Jeong-hyeok (Hyun Bin), and this is where the main conflict and the plot points of the show start.
Many other characters are introduced while Jeong-hyeok attempts to hide Se-ri from anyone looking for her as he tries to find a way for her to return safely to South Korea. You have Se-ri’s family, who is dealing with her disappearance in drastically different ways and Cho Cheol-gang (Oh Man-seok), a corrupt lieutenant commander of the North Korean Ministry of State Security who is doing everything in his power to get her arrested while harboring his secret of also running a criminal organization which involves things like smuggling illegal artifact into North Korea and stowing away people that have fleed from South to North Korea, etc, as well as a slew of other illegal activities some that are responsible of harming those he knows.
You have many other people introduced, such as Seo Dan (Seo Ji-hye), who has been arranged to marry Jeong-hyeok and Gu Seung-jun (Kim Jung-hyun) who has been living under a false identity after being caught up in an embezzling scheme with Se-ri’s brother Se-hyung (Park Hyung-soo) but has romantic feelings for Se-ri which is something he conjured up during this scheme. All of these plot points end up interacting with each other one way or another.
Finally, there are many people around Se-ri and Jeong-hyeok, such as Jeong-Hyeok’s soldiers of Company Five and the people of the North Korean Village Jeong lives in, who all get their fair share of screen time interacting with the main characters to build relationships. I think this relationship-building helps the plot move along very nicely.
Speaking of relationship building, I would like to talk about the chemistry of the main characters for the show. Hyun Bin and Son Ye-jin did such a fantastic job at playing people who are unfamiliar with each other in personality seemingly and culture until, due to their many attempts of escape, they fall for each other, gaining a familiar bond with each other. The two leads end up becoming emotionally attached to each other, and anytime something affects the other in a negative way, you can see the hurt in their eyes. For more severe cases inflicting the main characters, the pain you can hear in the voices and the tears that fall seem all so very real. The two main leads, played by Hyun Bin and Son Ye-gin, ended up getting married in real life, which is so cute. They’ve been married for two years now.
I thought that the other two leads did a good job at their acting and chemistry as well, often trying and failing to show the other two leads whom they should really be with, often leading to moments of annoyance, which can clearly be seen. Other relationships become formed that may or may not come out of the blue.
Next, I’d just like to focus on the acting. I thought that Oh Man-seok, who played Cheol-gang, did an amazing job at playing a sinister lieutenant who would stop at nothing to keep his criminal organization a secret while attempting to get Se-ri to come with him to the Ministry to do god knows what. Even when you think he is put to an end, his tenacity keeps him coming back for more, and he becomes even more aggressive in getting what he wants. He’s super cocky and manipulative, and you feel pent-up anger, as you should for the guy.
I liked the acting, or I guess I should say interactions between the village ladies and Seri. You have people like Na Wol-suk (Kim Sun-young), who gets into heated arguments with Se-ri, especially when drunk, or Ma Young-ae (Kim Jung-nan), the wife of a colonel in the military. As Se-ri becomes more accustomed to North Korean culture, the ladies warm up to her, which leads to many comedic and emotional scenes between them.
Finally, you have the members of Company Five, such as Kim Ju-meok (Yoo Su-bin), who is fascinated with K-Dramas Park Kwang-beom (Lee Shin-young), who is oblivious to his good looks, as well as the others who are all able to learn about South Korean culture in many different ways especially when situations switch which is just a way to say something major without spoilers.
The whole plot is seamless for the most part. There were moments that I did consider to be filler but it was comedic for the msot part and I found myself enjoying these moments.
The show is definitely sad. It is a very serious show to address some dark plot points. There were moments that had me tear up more than I traditionally do. I, however, don’t want to spoil any of these moments. There were times when I had my first clinched up in a fist, wanting to punch my computer screen. Thankfully, that didn’t happen.
I now want to talk about the soundtrack. Overall, I thought the soundtrack was super diverse. There was a mix of moody, militant music, much more melodic and bubbly pop music, and as per usual for K-Dramas, your sad, sappy but happy-feeling music whenever bonds are formed greater or for the moments when chaos and sadness intertwine.
I also thoroughly enjoyed the cinematography of the show. There were so many good shots of people together that complemented how they felt towards each other and there were just beautiful shots in general used to show breathtaking scenery, etc.
From the K-Dramas I watched, they do a good job with the soundtrack and cinematography.
The show did a great job at ending plot points but following them off with other plot points that made sense and, in the end, tying the whole story up in a unique and satisfying way, making the sixteen episodes not too bad to sit through.
The only times when I thought the show dragged was when there were scenes that tried to build up relationships that I thought were already built up and didn’t lead anywhere once the scene was done. It felt that some filler was put in just to extend the runtime of some of the episodes to a certain threshold. It really isn’t that bad, though. I wish some of the characters had more screen time. I won’t say anything too specific about this to avoid major spoilers. This is just my opinion.
There was one aspect of the show that might seem cliche to some. I won’t say much about it but I actually didn’t mind it that much. How they did this “thing” was interesting.
Overall, Crash Landing on You is an amazing K-Drama, and I can’t believe it took me this long to get to it. Park Ji-Eun once again hit the nail on delivering a romantic comedy filled with sadness, joy, tension, and dread where the world was built based on relationship-building, etc. If you’re a fan of romantic comedies or want to start watching K-Dramas, I recommend you watch this one. You won’t be disappointed.