Stills from "Mr. Sunshine"
TvN's highlight of this season, "Mr. Sunshine", began to explode again, and on the day of the start of the broadcast in July, the ratings of the first episode easily broke the record of 6.332% created by "Lonely and Brilliant God and Ghost" at the end of 2016, which was as high as 8.9%. The second episode rushed to 9.7%, setting a new record for weekend dramas. This drama is also a divine drama created by the "strongest choreography combination" Kim Eun-sook and Lee Young-fu for the third time, looking at the achievements of the first two masterpieces "Descendants of the Sun" and "Ghosts", you can imagine that the producers have high hopes for it.
However, before the drama began broadcasting, it was not too optimistic about public opinion. First of all, the sky-high production fee of 40 billion won discouraged the SBS TV station that was originally planned to take over, and tvN took over the market instead. At the same time, Lee Byung-hyun, who plays the male protagonist, was dissed by Korean netizens. Due to a series of sex scandals such as being exposed to cheating on his wife during pregnancy, Lee Byung-hyun's image in the minds of the South Korean people in recent years is quite subtle. As soon as the storm came out, it was as if everyone was waiting to see Li Bingxian's joke.
As a result, the Korean audience "said no in their mouths, but the remote control in their hands was very honest", and the "whole network boycott" that was said to be good became "the whole network is popular" without paying attention. And according to kim Eun-sook's setting of the male protagonist, he not only needs to perform the calmness of historical dramas, show a large span of time and rich layers of character forms, but also be able to speak English and Japanese fluently at the same time. Looking around, under such harsh standards, there is really no one more suitable than Li Bingxian.
Comments from South Korean netizens after the broadcast of "Mr. Sunshine". @Hey a clear stream figure
In Li Bingxian, it seems that there is such a magic that you forget all his labels when watching him perform. There is a joke circulating among Korean audiences: "Even if you hate Lee Byung-hyun as a person, you can never dislike his acting skills." "It is precisely because the level of business is too strong, so even if it is a basket of scandals, it is impossible to comment on his professional performance."
From a teenager who was simply obsessed with movies to a movie boss who people loved and hated, Li Bingxian spent a lot of time.
In 1970, Li Bingxian was born into a merchant family, and his father was also a veteran film fan. Although due to business needs always travel in Southeast Asia, and the family gets together less and more. But as soon as he had time, his father would read to him some popular actor anecdotes and compare famous lines in the movie.
Influenced by his father, Li Bingxian has often been in the cinema since he was 4 years old. The momentum of concentration even surpasses that of adults. He once excitedly talked about that time in an interview: "When I was a child, I really loved to watch movies, the most exaggerated one, because I was reluctant to go to the toilet in the middle of the movie screening, and I always wanted to wait for the movie to finish. Who knew it was too late for the movie to finish, and I was peeing my pants halfway through! ”
Obsessed with movies, the young Li Bingxian had the idea of becoming a director, and when he was in high school, he and his friends planned to participate in the youth film festival, but because of the expensive rental fees, they ran home to ask for money, at this time, his parents did not support his choice, and scolded him. The "cruel" reality also had to make Li Bingxian temporarily abandon this idea.
After entering the university, Li Bingxian's film dream found an outlet through another way. A close friend of his mother advised him to "not waste his handsome appearance" and insisted on getting a declaration form for him for the KBS TV actor training class. At this time, his parents also turned to encourage him: "I don't expect you to be a star, but boys should try more while they are young to enrich their life experience." As a result, 20-year-old Li Bingxian passed three rounds of examinations and eventually became a trainee in kbs' 14th actor training class.
In 1991, Li Bingxian officially debuted, playing an important supporting role in the TV series "Asphalt My Hometown", and achieved his debut on the small screen. With a sunny and handsome face and a good male hormone figure, Li Bingxian, as a youth idol, was very successful in the TV drama industry, and soon captured the hearts of a large number of female audiences.
He worked with almost all of South Korea's top actresses at the time. He and Cui Zhen starred in "Beautiful Days", and later partnered Song Huiqiao to star in "L.A. Life and Death Love", all of which received super high ratings and topicality.
Stills from "Beautiful Days"
Stills from "L.A. Love"
In the early TV series, he portrayed the image of some reliable, decent and good men. Although his appearance is not a first-class handsome man, it is rare that he has the dual charm of a man and a boy. When it is deep, it can make people feel a sense of stability and tenacity. With a grinning smile, a little shyness will appear on his face, and a hint of cunning flashes in his eyes from time to time, and his performance is quite convincing with extremely high plasticity.
Between 1995 and 1996, Lee Byung-hyun had become a well-known figure in the circle, and at the same time, he also began to try to enter the film industry. Participating in the first film "Who Made Me Crazy" won him a big bell award for newcomer actor trophy.
Poster of "Who Drove Me Crazy"
Just when the career was in full swing, bad news came from home. In 1997, Lee Byung-hyun's father failed to invest in a Southeast Asian construction company, leaving a huge debt of 1 billion won, and in the following years, Lee Byung-hyun had to take on the task of repaying the debt and worked endlessly like a machine. In order to save some money, he also left the reputation of "iron rooster" in the circle.
However, it is precisely because of the efforts of those years that a number of very representative film roles began to appear on Li Bingxian's resume, he was the teacher who exuded personality charm in "The Organ in Memory", the "Li Xiuhe" who cried and blamed himself for the death of his friend in "JSA Common Security Area", or the "Dazhen" who carried the lifelong ethical shackles of love madness in "Poisoning"... From 1999 to 2005, his acting skills gradually improved to perfection, easily surpassing many young actors of the same age.
Stills from "The Organ in Memory"
Stills from "Common Security Zone"
If you carefully taste these roles played by Li Bingxian, you will find that he is very good at dealing with some "two-sided personality" characters. In the early masterpieces, Dazhen in "Poisoning" (2002) and Shanyu in "Sweet Life" (2005) are such examples.
The Daijin in "Poisoning" has always seemed to be wearing a mask. At the beginning of the story, he gives the impression of a sunny boy, he is the gentle brother of the family, living with his brother and sister-in-law, but there is a fierce love for his sister-in-law (Lee Mei-yeon) hidden in his heart. In the first half hour of the film, he disguises his true heart. When Li Bingxian expresses this part of his emotions, his tone is relaxed, but his eyes are always outside the two, and he cannot look directly into his sister-in-law's eyes, for fear that a gaze will reveal his true feelings.
Stills from Poisoning
With the car accident between the two brothers, everything changed. Dazhen wakes up that his brother is still asleep, and he decides to make up a lie and continue to live with his sister-in-law as his brother. In these scenes after the car accident, Li Bingxian changed his face, he sometimes became distracted because of his eyes, but as long as it was a rival play with Li Meiyan, his eyes would flow with deep affection, and in the final passion scene, Li Bingxian stared at Li Meiyan's face like that, as if to penetrate her body inch by inch, the audience could clearly feel the strong reaction between the characters.
These complex emotions are done by his "eyes", until now, the most important skill in Lee Byung-hyun's acting skills is still in the "eyes", his performance style is different from many extroverted actors in South Korea, no matter how crazy the character image is, the way he finally chooses to deal with it will be slightly "retracted".
The character of Shanyu in 2005's "Sweet Life" even in some moments is reminiscent of Alain Delon in Jean Pierre Melville's "Lone Killer", although they are all people who wander on the edge of darkness, their faces do not change color when they kill, but their eyes are full of endless loneliness like the deep sea.
Sun-woo's face was always full of numbness, and there was no hesitation in his eyes when he killed people, until he met the girl who was under the protection of the eldest brother's wings, and a trace of panic began to appear in his eyes, and in the cello played by the girl, his eyes gradually softened, and even revealed a kind of shyness that only ignorant teenagers have. He knew that his admiration for the girl was a distant dream, but he was still willing to pay the price. In the second half of the film, on the road to escape from being suspected by the eldest brother and being hunted down and killed by the family, the sense of helplessness like an abandoned child and the sense of despair of lamenting fate are vividly expressed through Li Bingxian's "eye skills" and bitter smile.
Stills from "Sweet Life"
His outstanding performance in this film won him the 42nd Korean Film Grand Bell Award and the 26th Korean Film Blue Dragon Award for Best Actor, and was given the opportunity to step on the red carpet in Cannes to sign a contract with Hollywood. From his debut in 1991 to his firm foothold in the film industry in 2005, Lee Byung-hyun's business ability has been highly appreciated, and the image of a high-quality and good man has also been deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, and has been selected as "the most perfect man in Korea" by the Korean people for many times. It can be described as a smooth ride.
But then, these flawless "human designs" began to fall apart with a sensational "X-File" in the entertainment industry. In the decade since, the peach scandal about Li Bingxian has almost never stopped, first being exposed as a perverted private life, and then going to court in 2009 for abducting women and abandoning him, until the indecent video of marital cheating was exposed in 2014, and he completely became a "scumbag with a stomach full of flowers and intestines" in the public mind. We all know that the more perfect the "human design" is, the more crazy it is after being punctured, and Li Bingxian should be regarded as a typical example of the collapse of human design.
Stills from Special Forces: Rise of the Cobra
But it is quite ironic that in this decade of round after round of peach-colored turmoil, his acting road has become smoother and smoother. Inside, he entered the room in various Hollywood blockbusters, and inside there was a Korean local conscience to send him straight to the throne of the movie emperor. Korean audiences were also busy scolding him, while contributing considerable box office revenue to him.
And, you can't deny that since he completely stripped off the label of "good man", his play path has become wider. If in the first ten years he portrayed mostly good people with "two-sided personalities", then in the last ten years, he contributed to the screen some classic "good and evil" people.
In the historical theme of "Two-Faced King" (2012), he simply played two roles by one person, and one person took on 80% of the scenes of the entire film. In the play, while accurately portraying the image of the tyrannical and extremely oppressive king, at the same time, he played a small citizen who was happy with a happy destiny and a little silly, and in the process of plot development, this cowering and shrinking little citizen also gradually began to reveal a more complex side of human nature, this seamless connection between one good and one evil did not make people feel jumpy at all, showing a very high deductive skill.
Stills from "The Two-Faced King"
At the end of 2015, the topic The Insider was released, in which the role of the political Ahn Sang-kyu, played by Lee Byung-hyun, easily won the Grand Slam of the three major Korean film awards (Baeksang, Qinglong, and Dazhong) for him (the only actors who won the three major awards were Choi Min-sik and Han Seok-gyu).
After watching the 3-hour director's cut version of "The Insider", you can understand the more complete outline of the character of An Shangjiu. Compared with the prosecutor played by Cao Chengyou, his character growth process is portrayed more delicately, and Li Bingxian also added some of his own ideas and designs when shaping this character, which he himself called "letting the character drop a few screws".
In 2016, at the 37th Green Dragon Film Awards, Li Bingxian won the Best Actor Award for "The Insider" and completed the "Grand Slam".
Originally, An Shangjiu in the script was a political hooligan who was desperate for revenge, and it was only because of the hatred of the broken hand that he began to cooperate with the prosecutor. He should have been a serious role in the end, but Li Bingxian added a lot of "humor" to him when acting, which made people see the shrewd side of An Shangjiu, and from time to time saw that he was "self-made smart" and was opposed by the evil people, adding a lot of layers to the character. At the beginning of the director's cut, Ahn Sang-kyu, dressed in exquisite clothes, was arguing with reporters, talking about his favorite movie "Chinatown", he sat on the leather sofa and calmly swallowed the smoke ring, pretending to be indifferent to the oppression of saying harsh words, which would make people think of the classic scene in "The Godfather" for a moment.
"The Insider" begins
In the growth history of An Shangjiu's street gangsters and the late period of being betrayed by the organization, Li Bingxian showed the stupidity in the bones of the characters. A seemingly random one-handed noodle eating scene can make people feel the stubbornness of An Shangjiu who fell to the bottom but still refused to bow his head. Whether it is the stupidity of the Hanging Erlang Dang, or the calm after transforming into an avenger, Li Bingxian delicately shows the audience through his eyes and body language.
The noodle eating scene in "The Insider"
Perhaps it is also because in those years, Li Bingxian has experience in Hollywood, which makes him more relaxed in his interpretation of various characters on the screen. Among the Korean male stars, Lee Byung-hyun is the only super-first-class actor who has officially entered Hollywood and left a handprint on the Walk of Fame.
Whether it's the "White Ghost of Ninjas" in Special Forces, the villain T-1000 in Terminator 5, or the Western Cowboy in "New Heroes seven dragons", his corrective hands and cool posture are impressive. It can be said that if he transforms into a pure star, it will not make people feel abrupt. And as an all-round artist, he can also be proficient in multiple languages in a very short period of time for filming needs (English and Japanese, majoring in French and Russian at university), which is enough to make him popular internationally.
Stills from Terminator: Genesis
At the 88th Academy Awards in 2016, Lee Byung-hyun (left) presented the Best Foreign Language Film Award in fluent English.
Therefore, after so much experience, after 9 years of returning to the small screen to star in "Mr. Sunshine", the audience really has no reason to resist. Netflix bought the rights to "Mr. Sunshine" early and will broadcast it online in 190 countries, so it is also wise to find an actor with international reputation to star. It is rumored that lee byung-hyun starred in the drama for 150 million won per episode, accounting for 8.5% of the total production cost. But now it seems that it is really "good value for money".
The role of Choi Yoo-jin, written by Kim Eun-sook, feels that it is completely tailor-made for Lee Byung-hyun. In this man, there is both a side of carrying weight forward, and after meeting the young lady played by Kim Tae-ri, he shows a rare innocence.
Li Bingxian was originally particularly good at quietly showing the character change with his eyes, and this time he used a large number of micro-expression changes to delicately show the tension of the undercurrent. So even if the age gap between the two leading actors is not small, as long as it is an opponent in the same frame, you will not feel the slightest embarrassment. On the contrary, you can also taste a sweet breath comparable to first love from the flustered eyes and ambiguous and restrained love words that are tempting each other. This chemistry must be a spark that can only burst out between mature actors. So even South Korean audiences have to admit: "As long as there is a scene where Lee Byung-hyun appears, it feels like they are watching a movie... The rivalry between the two is so beautiful! ”
To make The Korean audience so divided, Lee Byung-hyun is also a cruel character. No matter how disgusted you are with him, as long as you see his performance on the screen and see the affection in his sharp eyes, you will be attracted like a magnet and involuntarily approach. Sometimes he may reluctantly shout "how can I watch this kind of scumbag's play", and the next second will excuse him "after all, character is not equal to strength".
There is no doubt that he will still walk the next road in controversy. But perhaps, this sense of contradiction is also the charm of Li Bingxian as an actor.