Success with “Big Mouth” even after a long break: What makes Lee Jong Suk an actor that never disappoints?
Before “Big Mouth”, Lee Jong Suk’s other works also achieved great success.
The phrase “an actor whom you can trust” can definitely be used to describe Lee Jong Suk. He acts well, he’s good at picking interesting scripts, and he’s got a good eye for finding characters he can pull off. There may be countless other reasons, but what stands out is his ability to attract viewers.
This explains why Lee Jong Suk succeeds in the commercial performance of every drama he appears in. Once again, he is proving that this is true through MBC’s ongoing drama “Big Mouth”.
The drama follows Park Chang Ho (Lee Jong Suk), a third-rate lawyer with only a 10% winning rate nicknamed Big Mouth. He is suddenly asked to defend a mysterious murder case. Shortly after accepting the request, Park Chang Ho suffers a terrible car accident and is imprisoned for drug use. To make it worse, he is even framed as a rare genius con artist, known as Big Mouse. His family’s life is threatened. Being put in a situation where he has to be Big Mouse to protect his family, Park Chang Ho changes his mind and fights against an enemy with a huge conspiracy. In order to find the real Big Mouse and clear up his name, he continues the intense brain fight with the privileged class.
“Big Mouth” marks Lee Jong Suk’s first comeback to the small screen after 3 years and 4 months. He plays Park Chang Ho, a lawyer who is sucked into a series of twists. In order to survive, sometimes to save someone, or to escape a situation, he radiates intense charisma with blazing eyes and cold expressions. There are scenes in “Big Mouth” where Lee Jong Suk reminds viewers of his characters in the movie “The Witch 2” and “V.I.P”.
The sweet romance between Lee Jong Suk and Girls’ Generation’s Yoona is another highlight of “Big Mouth”. Since “Big Mouth” has a complex genre that combines hard-boiled noir and thriller, the scenes showing Lee Jong Suk and Yoona’s love line and Lee Jong Suk’s heart-fluttering acting, appear like a refreshing rain in the midst of a raging story and makes viewers smile.
Lee Jong Suk debuted as a model in 2005. Since then, he has starred in various dramas such as “School 2013”, “Pinocchio”, “I Hear Your Voice”, “While You Were Sleeping”, “W: Two Worlds”, “Romance is a Bonus Book”, and the movies “The Face Reader”, “No Breathing”, “Hot Young Bloods”, “V.I.P” and “The Witch 2”.
Starting out as a model, he caught the attention from the beginning of his career with impressive height and good proportions. He is also known for his strong aura which can sometimes be soft and sometimes cool, depending on the presence or absence of a smile. Lee Jong Suk’s red lips and fair skin emphasize his boyish beauty even now that he has completed his military service.
Perhaps because of such charm, many of Lee Jong Suk’s signature works are romantic stories in which he plays a “pure man” or a “younger man.” However, if you look closely at the works he has starred in, the genres vary.
In 2018, he took on the role of playwright Kim Woo Jin, who suffers from a hopeless romance with Yoon Shim Deok in the miniseries “The Hymn Of Death”. This is the drama that shows Lee Jong Suk’s ability to nail the melodramatic genre. In the 2016 drama “W: Two Worlds”, he plays Kang Chul, a fictional character that crosses the world of reality and webtoons. His other outstanding characters include Park Soo Ha of “I Can Hear Your Voice”, a high school student with supernatural ability to read people’s minds, and Choi Dal Po of “Pinocchio”, a reporter with a brilliant brain and memorization ability. His characters always introduce something new to the viewers. The only thing that seems to overlap is Lee Jong Suk’s love for the fantasy genre.
It is a smart decision by Lee Jong Suk to choose “Big Mouth” after a long break due to enlistment. Rather than presenting a repetitive image to viewers, Lee Jong Suk transforms into a character that feels both familiar and unfamiliar, without forgetting to highlight his well-known charm as an actor. This worked, and it served as a way to prove his range of acting.
As the years went by, from a model who turned to acting, Lee Jong Suk grew into a real actor with his very own color. He plays characters that are not easy to pull off with his solid skills and experience. This is how he achieves another “lifetime character” with every comeback and it explains why his fans as well as K-drama always have different opinions when asked to choose Lee Jong Suk’s most iconic characters.
Lee Jong Suk has added another iconic work, “Big Mouth”, into his filmography. Therefore, anticipation is already high on what kind of work and character he will choose next.
Source: naver
