Review: Too late to say I love you

Lai Bu Ji Shuo Wo Ai Ni, also known as Too late to say I love you, is a chinese drama broadcasted by HBTV one 2010 from August 30th to September 10th.

Synopses: From original novel by Fei Wo Si Cun. Yin Jingwan, a young woman from a wealthy merchant family, saved a young man on a train who was escaping from a rivaling warlord manhun. When she returned home, her parents betrothed her to a childhood friend, but her fiancée was put into prison in Chengzhou for smuggling firearms and illegal western drugs. Jingwan decided to go to Chengzhou to rescue her fiancee. But she did not know, this trip would completely change her life. (font: mydramalist)

This drama starts really nice, since we are introduced to a very strong-willed female lead called Jing Wan. Despite being born in a time where women were raised just to be married of and construct a family, she's very independent and fights really hard to achieve what she wants.

In order to save her fiancé and childhood friend, in the middle of a civil war, she left her family and city and cross the country trying to find a way to get him out of prison. In this new city she uses her connections and get close to the man who owned his life to her. What she didn't know was the he was Murong Feng Pei Lin the new commander and that he was using her fiancé in order to capture his father killers.

Murong Feng is a typical militar man from this era, born and raised in a militar family he never knew other life besides that. He's meticulous, calculating and kind of cruel, but a the same time he's righteous, caring, kind and want to use his power to create a more fair country without wars. One of his best friends is Cheng Jin Zhi: raised together and it's really obvious that she's in love with him (in a very possessive way), as she thinks that no woman can understand him like her; besides this craziness she's a very capable woman, a great strategist and a great soldier . His right hand man is called Shen Jia Ping and all the time he shows how loyal and how a good friend he is to Murong Feng, always trying to do what he thinks is the best for his Fourth Master (I found that it was worthing mention his name here, since he's a very great character and crucial at this drama).

We're introduced to Murong Feng older sister Murong San Xiao Jie, (I really dunno her name, since in the drama she's always mentioned as Third Sister ><) who is a noble lady from this age and is the one who makes company to Jing Wan during her stay at Chengzhou. We watch how Jing Wan tries really hard to save Jian Zhang, her fiancé, who after the death of his parents became the lead of his family and now is struggling with their business and almost going bankrupt wich lead him to do illegal business.

After sometime we get to know Cheng Yan Zhi, brother of Jin Zhi and also the best friend of Murong Feng. Despite being born in a militar family with a general father, he decided to become a doctor and to work for the more needed. He has an amazing character and is an amazing friend, one of my favorites character of this drama.

Rating

• Story: 9/10

I really liked this drama. As a woman is always really hard to watch dramas where the female lead has to deal with an abusive love, but this one has very strong female characters and for the time of the set up of the story is very hard to find dramas like that. When I came across this drama at MDL I was really confused if I would've started or not, as I read that this drama had a very possessive love and strong scenes.. Since I watch a lot of lakorns (where this kind of behavior is really common) I didn't find this one really out of planet, I do find Murong Feng selfish and hard to understand sometimes; but if you understand the time that the drama recite and how were man at that age I don't feel like he's really a bad guy for Jing Wan. I felt like he tried to lover her in his own way through the whole drama, just learning that love can't be so selfish at the end but he learnt in such a beautiful way (I always think that if you do things wrong and unknowingly or knowingly hurt anybody, and after that do anything to fix yours wrongdoing it's a beautiful way to grow into a better person.. After all we're all humans and we're born to learn from life). This drama brings to us all kinds of love, friendship. loyalty and how pride and selfishness can change a world. There are some parts of the story that are really overboard and sometimes gets a little boring, but overall the plot is really good so it deserves a 9.

• Acting/Cast: 8/10

Like almost all chinese dramas I have a hard problem with the acting of some actors, but I must say that the chemistry between the leads at this drama is amazing! Wallace Chung became one of my favorite chinese actors after this drama, I have a huge problem when I came across with actors who have beautiful eyes language and although sometimes his acting is a bit weird he nailed Murong Feng in a very handsome way. He could transpose all of the character feelings and almost all the time I wished I was Jing Wan, specially when he was kissing her (OMFG, he's an amazing kisser! It felt like he was devouring her, such a passionate and hot kisses). Li Xiao Ran also did an amazing job as Jing Wan, my only problem was when she needed to look strong and firm since she looked kind weird, but almost all the time she transposed really well the feelings. For me it's really hard to find good chinese actress, they always look weird for me but for this character they made a good choice.. I'll repeat again: what an amazing chemistry and we have a lot of hot kisses! My huge problem with the cast of this drama was Qi Fang as Cheng Jin Zhi, I didn't like any scenes with her.. her acting skills are really bad in my opinion and her wig at the beginning of the drama make it a lot of worse. All the rest of the supporting cast did a great job and did their role well.

• Music: 6/10

This drama didn't had any memorable song for me, the music in the drama is really good but not too much into my liking ><. The one that I did liked was the opening song.

• Rewatch Value: 7/10

 

• Overall: 8.5/10

This drama became definitively one of my favorites chinese one. The reason is that I found all of characters here so real, so human. They deal with their pride, dreams and desires in a very realistic way; almost all the time putting themselves before the other (wich is very human) and they pay the price of their choices. I know that sometimes this drama can be very unrealistic, but wich drama isn't? I found the love story very beautiful and I really liked the way the characters progressed. It's a drama that is very worth to watch if you like historical dramas with strong leads and militar/civil war theme. After this drama I'll try to find another ones with Wallace Chung, cause I fell in love with him here. Be prepared to cry a lot and be addicted! You will not want to get up of front of the TV, since this drama flows really well that you didn't even see the episodes going by.!

[caption id="attachment_181" align="aligncenter" width="467"] Find him very sexy with this uniform![/caption]

Dear Chingus, if you read till the end thanks very much! I decided to create this blog to share a lot of feelings and information to you guys.. I'm watching asian dramas for four years now and decided to share what I know and I watched with you, hoping that my thoughts can be of any help and that can bring another fans to this magical world. I'm sorry if I have a poor english, I'll try my best to work on making it better. This is my first review here, if you have critics please share with me! I'll try to bring another ones in portuguese too, for my brazilian chingus! Thanks for reading and please comment!