This dark gritty Japanese BL is something I was not expecting. The story focuses on a Yakuza bodyguard assigned to kill his young boss. The premise sounds interesting but the execution was just weird. There were lot of problems with the show like violence, abuse, coercion and even forcing themselves sexually. Eventually it somewhere becomes. BL with some nonsense stuff. Thankfully the series was only 6 episodes of about 26-30 minutes each. Kataoka is a respected yakuza leader. His boss has grown old and frail, unable to manage the organization anymore. Leadership now falls to the boss's son, Keito. He assigns Odajima as Kataoka's new handler to keep him in check. Kataoka is impulsive and treats Odajima aslmost as a servant even forcing sex on him. But beneath the rough exterior, Kataoka occasionally reveals a gentler side. Odajima, on the other hand, is stoic and distant, keeping his emotions under tight control. What Kataoka doesn't know is that Odajima has a hidden agen...
A flight attendant returns to Korea after 2 years. He meets his ex-boyfriend in a cafe who is still upset about a past event because of which this guy left. The guy abruptly leaves the cafe without saying goodbye, when his friend goes inside the cafe. After sometime this man meets a guy in orange jacket through internet chat. Flight attendant wants a quick sex in a bathroom whereas the new guy wants something more tender and natural even though it is supposed to be a one night stand. When orange jacket notices a scar on the guy's back, our protagonist becomes touchy, and decides suddenly he does not want to do anything sexual anymore, however, he still wants his company, and so after some small bickering, they head to a bar. Seeing a man in a bar he runs after him. The orange jacket guy is confused. It is later revealed that the main character was stabbed in a homophobic attack, which led to him leaving Korea since police and press wont leave him alone and they outed him. With continuous bickering between them, and not being comfortable being open about their emotions, it becomes clear they feel affection and compassion towards one another. They head to a park and discuss their pasts. They have sex and before parting ways. Could this one night stand eventually lead to something more meaningful for the two guys who are both looking for emotional companionship in their own ways?
It is interesting how we are not told the names of both the characters until the very end of the film. It is not important, but I didn't even realize till that point that the names were missing. The story is interesting, but what I did not understand is why would the orange jacket guy continuously keep going back to our main man despite being rejected by him multiple times. Why that crazy attraction, when you see that clearly something is off with him. But if you leave that aside for a moment, both the actors do go through a gamut of emotions. Oddly the things are not very evident when you watch the film. There are a lot of subtle moments. You may totally ignore to realize that the person whom he meets in the beginning was also attacked by the attackers and the reason our guy has come back to town is because the attacker has been released from prison. Our main guy is a classic case of 'once bitten twice shy' , and so he struggle to show his emotions to anyone and running away from his past. He'd rather push away a strangers compassion than feeling the love. He is bitter. I do understand his point of view. But not the other guy's compassion. I am still not very sure. Great acting otherwise and beautiful photography. A bit slow in a lot of places.
The not so obvious plot, in my opinion, would have been so much better if the screenplay was slightly more detailed. Sometime 'less is more' but in this case, i think, it could have been better. (6/10)
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