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Ojing-eo Geim - Usan-eul Sseun Namja
Squid Game - The Man with the Umbrella / episode 1.3
South Korea 2021
produced by Kim Jiyeon, Hwang Dong-hyuk (executive) for Siren Pictures/Netflix
directed by Hwang Dong-hyuk
starring Lee Jung-jae, Park Hae-soo, Oh Yeong-su, Wi Ha-joon, Hoyeon, Heo Sung-tae, Kim Joo-Ryung, Anupam Tripathi, Yoo Seong-ju, Yoon Don-Sun, Yoon Seung-Hoon, Kwak Ja-hyoung, Kim Dong-Won, Yoon Young-Kyun, Kim Byeong-cheol, Lee Jung-Jun, Hyun Jin, Choi Junseok, Park Geon-ryul, Na Dae-Heum, Jeon Young-soo (voice)
written by Hwang Dong-hyuk, music by Jung Jae-il
TV series Squid Game
review by Mike Haberfelner
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The players for the games have been collected and are loaded onto a
ferry to ship them to their secret island - and somehow, detective Hwang (Wi Ha-joon)
makes it onto the ferry, manages to overcome and kill one of the masked
guards and assume his identity - not too hard a task considering the
guards are constantly masked -, and do some undercover investigations. Meanwhile,
of the 201 who have left the games 187 have returned, eyes wide open, and
now they gather in small groups for strength in numbers. To no surprise,
the hero of the piece Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) partners with his pretty
smart school buddy Cho Sang-woo (Park
Hae-soo), brawny but good-natured migrant worker Ali (Anupam Tripathi) and
dementia-plagued Oh Il-nam (Oh Yeong-so), while small-fry gangster Jang Deok-su
(Heo Sung-tae) gathers a group of low-lives around himself, a gang so
unappealing even pickpocket Kang Sae-byeok (Hoyeon) refuses to join -
while loud-mouthed Han Mi-nyeo (Kim Joo-Ryung), a character properly
introduced only this episode, has no such reservations, seeking only her
own advantage. The second game, called Ppopgi, has the contestants
extract a stamped shape out of hardened dough using nothing but a needle -
if the shape is broken, the contestant loses. There are different shapes
which pose different difficulty levels, from a circle (easy) to the most
difficult, an umbrella, and the contestants only have 10 minutes time.
Suffice to say, all the leads make it through, but one of the players who
doesn't, awaiting imminent execution, disarms a guard and unmasks him.
Shocked that the guard is probably not even 20 years old, the player
shoots himself while the other guards shoot all the other players unable
to finish the task, and the mysterious front man himself shoots deas the
unmasked guard ... After two very tense episode, this one loses
a bit in sheer force, as the whole thing gets split up into more and more
subplots, each with its own set-up, and consequently the tension can't be
kept on the same high anymore. Still, some intriguing goings-on keep the
audience interested throughout and also deepen the mystery of the show as
a whole, to make this a pretty good watch still.
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