Image courtesy of Seoul Broadcast System

In gambling, especially poker, “All In” means to bet all the chips one has on the table on ONE game.

I watched “All In”, a 2003 Korean drama upon the recommendation of a close friend. Yes, I finally finished it, all 24 episodes. I know ntv7 showed it recently, but I don’t have a TV, and even if I did, I dislike dubbed shows.

In this Korean drama, “All In” is mostly about gambling, from dingy “houses” to high class casinos in Korea and Las Vegas.

“All In” has all the ingredients of life in the real world; from triad gangs of Seoul to policemen, from hoodlums to corporate figures, from prisoners to politicians, from the very poor to the very rich, from struggling for power to losing power, from succeeding to falling into disgrace, from brotherhood to betrayal, from victory to defeat, from friendship and romance to enmity.

What makes this drama all the more interesting is that this is a drama based on the true life story of a Mr. Cha Min-Su, who went to Las Vegas with only 18 dollars in his pocket and became a millionaire by becoming a pro-gambler and pro-Korean chess player. However, Mr. Cha had worse knocks in life than what's portrayed in "All In".

Lee Byung Hun (BH) is the main star, whose character Kim In-Ha is so unfortunate, that all the bad things just fall onto him. This is the guy my friend asked me to watch out for. She said he’s leng chai. BUT I don’t like.

I like Ji Sung who really managed to bring to life the character of Choi Jung-Won as a guy who is tortured by love, controlled by a strong-willed and unscrupulous businessman father and trapped in various circumstances not to his liking. He looks so sweet all the time that even when he is scheming, you (OK, OK I) just can’t seem to hate him.

And when he cries (most of the men in this drama cried at one time or another), I just felt like crying with him.

It’s rare for me to think of Chinese guys as leng chai but from a scale of 1 to 10, Ji Sung gets 9.5 from me. Almost perfect, wooohooo Unfortunately, most of the photos of him online do not do justice to what he showed us in the drama.

I mentioned before Hyun Bin is also leng chai, but his kind is the boyish kind of leng chai. Ji Sung is the matured kind. Hyun Bin gets 8/10 :-p

Lee Byung Hun gets 7 only for looks, and 5 for acting hahahaha He is a piece of wood, only slightly better than Lee Hyun Woo in Attic Cat. Laugh also did not look good. Cry also did not look good. The only saving grace was when he KEPT QUIET and just let the camera focus on him from afar, whilst dressed in a trench coat, a pinstripe suit or at least a button down shirt.

But then Ji Sung looks just as well as Lee Byung Hun in suit. So do Jeong Yu-Seok and Huh Joon Ho (Yu Yong-Gu). Sorry to all fans of BH muahahaha *evil laughter*

The other leng chai in “All In” is the actor Jeong Yu-Seok / Jung Yoo Suk as Yim Dae-Soo. His character is a gangster in Seoul. And he’s got scars on his face to fit his role. The scars look real enough. He also managed to carry out the role almost perfectly, especially with his twitching eye lid or lips when he was seething with anger.

And his crying scene was very power. So silent, just a drop of tear rolling down his face. The message came across very well.

Yim Dae-Soo and Yoo Jung-Ae made a matching couple but too bad Dae-Soo has a bad ending, which I shall not disclose here.

Some of the scenes in this drama were so slow it felt like watching "The Bold & The Beautiful" and although I usually feel that 24 episodes for a drama is too long, if I can watch Ji Sung in this role, the drama can go on forever!

The mother of all gambling is when Kim In-Ha bet his life (all in) on one large round of game in the corporate world, going against his childhood best friend, Choi Jung-Won, fighting for money, power, success and the woman they both love.

Will Kim In-Ha, win, lose or fold? Naturally, I’m on Jung-Won’s side!

If you want to watch some glitz on TV and can spare 24 hours of your life, then go ahead and watch “All In”, but remember, Ji Sung is MINE!

That being said, this drama did not make me cry as much as the others that I watched. Maybe I am too jaded? Maybe I have no more tears left? *shrug*

The scenes that spoilt this drama were when Song Hae Gyo (Min Soo-Yeon) were made to wear "grown-up" office attire that made her look so frumpy. She really looked out of place.

The funnies:
Every time there was a street fight scene, capoiera music will come on. Wonder why they did not play the shaolin soundtrack. But at least it made more sense than the horse’s neigh in Attic Cat.

When Kim In-Ha and Yu Yong-Gu took English Language lessons in America, the teacher tried to teach them a sentence that has the word “ROAD”, but both of them kept saying “LOAD” instead. The teacher was so frustrated, while these two guys kept whispering to each other, and used eye signals, asking each other why the teacher was so mad, when they got the word exactly as the teacher wanted it.

It went something like this (example):

Teacher: I will be on the road at noon.
In-Ha & Yong-Gu: I will be on the load at noon.

Teacher: No! Road.

These two being said simultaneously:
In-Ha: Load
Yong-Gu: No! Load!