Reviews, montages, and director's notes show you why this series should be on every rom-com aficionado's watchlist.
Even if it doesn't seem like a conventionally challenging role, like The Merciless or Emergency Declaration,
He has shown great control, stillness, and subtlety in every scene. He is not acting to be Seon-gyeom, he is Seon-gyeom. He is never speaking a dialogue, he is thinking and speaking his thoughts. He is not responding to his co-actors, he is listening to the other person - processing the information and saying what comes to his mind.
Overall the script is well written and everyone has performed really well. There are some slips in the continuities and axis jumps. And you might find the edit going astray with the multiple storylines and the imaginary film sequences.
Watch this series for Siwan and the love story between Seon-gyeom and Mi-joo.
I have not seen a more real and warm love story before. And of course, only Siwan could have done justice to the role!
I have tried to compile different ways Siwan looks at Mi-Joo over the first five episodes of Run On. It's more than 20 different looks. Very subtlely different, but distinctly different. The remaining episodes bring a lot more variations.
Seon-gyeom is open about both his strength and his fragility. He needs to cry, be held, and be loved - accepting this about himself instead of shutting himself off helps Seon-gyeom redefine masculinity not only for himself but for the audience as well.
Here's a lovely montage with some of the best dialogues from first few episodes of the series. [Spoiler Alert]
Here's another one... [Spoiler Alert]
You will see that this series is like a warm hug on a rainy day. Very Comforting.
Run On has many simple yet powerful messages about Self Love, Family, Values, Relationships, Friendship, Commeradrie, and more.
Run On makes you realize that true love is actually empowering. It is simple, beautiful, easy, and very empowering.
Here's Siwan's beautiful song that he composed for this series. You & I, with lyrics with English translation.
The series pays homage to many well-known films from Hollywood. Godfather, Casablanca, and Jerry Maguire to name a few. Here's an article with more details.
However, he has missed a few like Kill Bill's iconic breaking wall practice scene, and the fact the director's name on the slate of the film shoot is Quentin.
The crew of this series is seriously passionate about good English films.
Here's a promotion video with English subtitles. Siwan is answering questions with keywords from lyrics of the OST album of Run On.
There's some very interesting trivia in this video.
Behind the scenes from co-actor, appreciating Siwan as the "kindest actor in Korea".
Director's Notes (Planning & Ki Seon Gyeom)
Here are the director's notes on planning and Siwan's Ki Seon Gyeom character. Below is the English translation using Google Translate.
Planning
We hate many things too easily. hate, discriminate, and ostracize It's easier for someone other than me. They don't hesitate to put down strict standards and downplay them.
The only thing we don't do easily is love.
It's been a long time since I've forgotten how to love myself, let alone the rest. What on earth made love and even people difficult?
The process of understanding people is similar to translating a foreign language. Of course, translation and living language are different. Different people speak different languages, but one thing is clear. Each person has their own language.
That means that if there are 6 billion people, there are 6 billion languages.
We each have our own language, and it's not necessarily limited to words. Speak with unexpressed thoughts and show with actions, milk is pronounced as seaweed, and in Rome, it is spoken in the Roman language, and silence is sometimes a language.
When we talk about love, we struggle with how to say it. How to express it, whether it is possible to express it, or whether it is better not to do it. When we talk about love, we hesitate to reconsider when to say it. When we start or when we part, every second- every second?
Ki Seon-gyeom (29), a man who is destined to only look ahead, is the national short-distance track and field team. We live in a world of running where we lose the moment we look back. Oh MI Joo (29), a woman who has to look back inertially, is a foreign currency translator.
We live in a world of translation where we rewind the same scene over and over again.
Will two people speak the same language? If we speak the same language. Will communication be good? Are we speaking the same Korean language now? It seems not, if so, will the love between these two really translate?
Run On is where the protagonists from different worlds meet and grow through each other.
Or, it is a story about breaking the mould that locked up assets, influencing them, and loving each other.
The way family comfort each other, who are lacking in one place or another, are not going to be hot and fervent. Rather, it will convey a little cold comfort, but this drama will ask. Should consolation just be hot and warm? Does love have to be passionate? How
should we convey this heart and words?
Ki Seon-gyeom (male, 29 years old) / national short-distance track and field team
He was his old fake. Is this how you feel when you read an autobiography that you entrusted to someone else's handwriting? As the son of a member of the National Assembly, a top actor, and the younger brother of a golf empress, while Reum Seok(?) is buried, Ki Seon-gyeom has never been the only one left without the title of family.
Until I met the owner of the hand who took out the preemption that was buried there, there was a fake gun in the hand that said it had meaning even if it wasn't real.
The first thing the sportsman held in his hand was a spear. Maybe he didn't want to exercise, but he didn't have a choice. I had to exercise before I even realized what I wanted to do, and I had to become a national team member. Every time I threw a spear, every time I saw a spear flying away and an empty hand, I felt empty. If I had never held anything, I would not have learned the sense of loss. Just as other thoughts intervened, I injured my shoulder.
The time it took for a player's life to be shattered was proportional to the time it took for surgery. I woke up alone in the hospital room. My father had a lot of people I met to rise to a higher position, my mother did not stop working, and my sister stayed abroad for international preparations. Even before the broken bones were put together, my father brought up the next sport. He asked if his shoulder was defective but his two legs were intact. Let's dream of a soccer player who couldn't fulfill his childhood dream. What beautiful fatherhood, I wonder if he's dreaming of a dream I've never seen before. If this is the case, it would have been better if I had dreamed of dying.
I wanted to push everything back and walk away. Like a spear thrown every day.
It was familiar to be left alone in a place where no one was, but Seon-gyeom was a teenager and sensitive. He ran out of the hospital room and ran through an unfamiliar street until he stopped when it became difficult to even breathe. He was running like crazy, so only the sound of his heart that was about to explode rang in his ears. It felt like only I had my own world that resonated loudly. It was the moment when Seon-gyeom switched to running. Running was like having my own world.
Did I say that life is a C between B and D? Choice between Birth and Death.
I’m living my life not because I never made a choice myself. The sportsman declared. It was the first choice in my life that I wanted to run. I decided to forsake the goddamn goodness and keep it simple. Let's not be greedy The good is right and the bad is wrong.
Ten seconds of training for ten years took only 10 seconds to break. It's better than the emptiness that comes after you toss what you hold in your hand. In an instant, it was close to the new Korean record, and it was consistently second place. Soon, the sword became a sign of the athletics world. If soccer had Ahn Jung-hwan and badminton players, athletics would have been an unpopular sport because of the skill, not the skill, but with Seon-gyeom’s face on it, tickets for unsold matches were sold and received unprecedented love calls from the advertising industry. Seon-gyeom himself was not interested in the fact that a face is a good thing to have inside or outside the track.
A face with good genes, nobility by birth, and a relaxed body with a proportion that seems to have been crafted with great care. There is no such thing as imitation of genuine eyes and leisure. Colleagues expressed their feelings of relative deprivation and inferiority in one word, unlucky. It is natural to chew, chew, taste, and enjoy from behind, and there were also many people who blatantly ridiculed Seon-gyeom in front of him because he did not respond. Again, Seon-kyung was not interested. No matter what other people say, it's free
Having had everything that one should be born with, I have never longed for anything. Living in a hotel is also a space where you can leave at any time. Is it because I've lived in a hotel for too long? Life is not a hotel. Living like this is to stay for a while, so I don't have an attachment to owning it.
It is like water because it has neither a stubborn taste nor an oriented form. Everyone thought of the pensiveness as a calm and serene lake. That's because they hadn't thrown stones into the lake. Seon-gyeom was a person who could twist and turn this splendid life entirely.
When Seon-gyeom's assault case became public, people said: For the sake of the juniors, for the corruption of the Federation, for the sake of justice, preoccupation was not for anything. What do I do for others? It was my instinct to help my juniors, but the method was a choice. The choice not to bear, the words of an assault in good faith, burst into laughter. It wasn't even hot iced coffee, and he chose to retire without any regrets.
The moment you get off the track may be the real life of the starting point. At that moment, Mi-joo was together. Mi-joo asked if the future wasn't scary, and Seon-gyeom shook his head. It is no longer scary to threaten others by threatening to be people below me by dominating others and threatening them with force. 'Cause that's all you can see.
I was afraid of the invisible things like heart, faith, hurt. Simply put, everything I didn't know until I met Mi-joo.
The series ends with this lovely frame of the entire crew - connected as ETs.
The reference to ET in the series is very prominent - and the main theme of Run On is expressing feelings - so it fits perfectly.
After all, life is all about connection, isn't it?
Congratulations to everyone for creating something so beautiful and universal.
The team recently celebrated the end party (a tradition where the team meets after the airing of the last episode) after 2 years of the date, because of Covid restrictions. Here's an article about it with nice pictures of the actors.
Here are a few stills from Script reading from hancinema.net
Here is the entire Behind the Scenes playlist [spoiler alert]