I’ve been trying to write a review of this drama for a while now, and just keep putting it off. Reason being, it’s so extremely hard to review. Like the K2, it started out with a bang and devolved into a hot mess, but unlike the K2, it managed to keep some form of structural integrity while it did so.
In short, if you’re wondering whether or not to watch it, DO. It’s fantastic and I love it. It also has a few things that bug me as a foreign viewer of some Korean romance tropes.
Here we go!
For starters, I don’t think the English translation of “whisper” really does justice to the drama in terms of conveying what it’s about. If you translate it literally, the meaning is “a word in the ear”, and that is a much closer approximation of what makes this drama tick.
Because this is a story about bribery, back room deals, and corruption that takes just a word in the ear of a friend or family member to send a man to jail falsely or bring one out unjustly.
So. Main Characters:
MMC: Lee Dong Jun (played by Lee Sang Yoon) an upright judge who is well aware of his lofty ideals and slightly pretentious in his uprightness.
MFC: Shin Yeong Joo (played by Lee Bo Yeong) a police section chief whose father has been set up for murder to take the fall for someone else, and who is driven by a strong moral code of her own.
Other Main Cast: Park Se Yeong, the daughter of the head of Taebaek Law Firm (played by the always amazing Choi Soo Yeon), Kang Jung Il, son of the Chairman of Bo Gook Industries (played by the terrifying Kwon Yul), Choi Il Hwan (Kim Kap Soo) and Kang Yoo Taek (Kim Hong Fa) fathers of Se Yeong and Jung Il respectively.
The story:
Judge Lee Dong Jun has a problem. He is an upright judge who never bows to pressure or takes a bribe (which is not his problem, btw) and he is rather proud of that stance of his. He stands arrogantly against his corrupt father, who wants him to marry into Taebaek Law Firm by the expedient of writing a ruling the way the head of Taebaek Law Firm wants him to write it (aka, find an innocent man guilty of murder to clear someone else).
He refuses to do it, of course, but the problem is that Taebaek Law Firm really wants a judge in their pocket. And they’re willing to do everything, including frame Lee Dong Jun for everything from corruption to sexual assault, to do so.
Lee Dong Jun, after steadfastly resisting temptation with the rather smug idea of being better than the people who are trying to bribe him, is at last faced with a choice: be righteous and be condemned as an evil man in the sight of the world, or be actually corrupt and look good in the eyes of the world.
To my extreme disappointment, he becomes a villain so he can keep looking good. I was also a bit shocked, but it was telegraphed there–the writing was excellent. His righteousness wasn’t more than a certain arrogance and a lack of real testing, though his morals were originally good.
The man he condemns is the father of Shin Yeong Joo, who had trusted him to be upright and rule rightly, and who gave him information to the effect of her father’s innocence just before Dong Jun condemned him.
This sets Shin Yeong Joo, who has found out that she can trust neither the judges nor her own colleagues in the police department, on a quest to prove her father’s innocence. She does this in an extreme way that I can’t agree with, but do understand. Having gained a spectacularly dreadful leverage on Dong Jun, who has been incorporated into TaeBaek Law Firm, she uses that leverage to put herself into the law firm as well, intending to bring about its downfall and the downfall of every corrupt person in it–including Dong Jun.
The Good:
The stakes were high, the drama fantastic, and the characterisation was delightful. I legitimately hated Lee Dong Jun for at least half of this drama, but I’m so glad it was good enough to keep me watching and waiting, hoping for certain outcomes. The outcomes I got weren’t the ones I’d originally hoped for, but they were good. The music is great, the character’s wardrobes are amazing, the themes they explore are fulfilling and enthralling, and there’s a sense of rich fullness to the whole drama (except for those odd and completely out of place product placement inserts!)
Consequences! So many consequences, followed right to the bitter end. So well done! Consequences for the bad guys, consequences for bad things done by the good guys. Justice done, corruption uprooted. Delightfully uplifting.
Consequences from good actions as well as bad, which is not as commonly shown. Matched up against the consequences for the bad actions, they showed up in high relief. Fantastic.
The Bad:
Smug looks. SO irritating! Half the first ten to twelve episodes were shots of one of the four MCs one-upping another and looking smug about it. I’m of the opinion that if you’re a good person you shouldn’t be smug at the expense of the bad guys. Just put them in jail, don’t get smug with me. I wanted to smack a lot of faces.
The product placement. SERIOUSLY bad in this one. The Subway ads, the facial products that they had to introduce a fluffy sort of romance to try and make work–just. Ew.
Speaking of the romance, just–also ew. The whole of first half of this drama was the MMC and MFC doing legitimately awful things to each other to get leverage on each other, one for good, the other for evil. When they begin to trust and rely on each other, it’s beautiful. And also slightly edgy, because we don’t yet know that one won’t betray the other.
I wanted that romance. It was beautiful. It was understated.
Instead, as the romance progressed, it turned into a fluffy kind of giggling thing that served to shoe-horn in another product placement of some kind of face cream. It was sickly and giggly and completely out of context with the gritty, sharp-edged feel of the rest of the drama.
What I wanted:
As mentioned earlier, I hated Dong Jun’s guts for a long time. I wanted him to fall utterly (he’d already lost all my respect) and I wanted to see the Evil MMC turn good.
I wanted that so much! It would have been amazing. And I could see that it was almost edging there. Honestly, Kwon Yul’s face always legit terrifies me–he’s so pretty and always so evil–but I wanted him to be redeemed.
I wanted the romance to stay thin-edged and trust-based, not fluffy feelings. I wanted to see it grow naturally.
What I got:
Alas, all the good guys remain good guys, and nearly all the bad guys remain bad guys. The good are redeemed (which is amazing) and the bad are shown to sink further into their corruption with a logical and terrifying trajectory (which is also amazing).
There are shaky alliances, one particularly delightful bad guy who was redeemed, and the complete destruction of every poisoned thing in the drama’s ecosystem. It is delightfully cathartic.
Last Thoughts:
In the end, I wanted Whisper to be more than what it was. I wanted it to be different. I was still happy with the way it went (apart from the ridiculous and unlikely style of romance it grew, and the utterly shoe-horned-in PP) but I loved the direction I saw it could have gone in, and didn’t.
I loved the themes of real righteousness versus outward righteousness; the juxtaposition of the budding trust relationship of the MMC and MMC against the lust-born, selfish relationship of the other two MCs that consumed itself. I would caution that there are themes of adultery and other adult themes in this drama, but they aren’t glorified or consequence-less. Consequences follow through right to the end–one of the biggest things I love about this drama.
Overall, definitely better than K2. K2 was more visually beautiful and the music was far better–plus those FIGHT SCENES, seriously! But the fluffy romance was worse in K2, plus consequences were just…missing. And in Whisper we don’t have that dreadful thing where the Evil MFC was shown to be not so evil in the end (thus making the Good MFC to be, well, kinda unhinged in her actions).
Ultimately satisfying and very well worth the 17 hours of storytelling time in 1 hour increments on Netflix.
I’ve only skimmed this review but I’m so tempted. It looks like about 75% my jam.
DO IT. You would love a LOT of it! And I’m certain you’ll see the divergent paths I mentioned where it could have gone differently with the four mcs. I really want to write that story now.