Good Boy is great but this underrated role of Park Bo-gum is brilliant

From When Life Gives You Tangerines to Good Boy, Park Bo-gum has been giving us his career-best performances one after the other. In When Life Gives You Tangerines, he played Gwan-sik, the best friend, husband, and family of Ae-sun, who always found him next to her in her difficult times. His quiet and thoughtful demeanor might not be the obvious sign of a strong man, but he helped Ae-sun get the confidence to break free of many patriarchal traditions, living at a time when it would have been difficult.

Now, in Good Boy, Bo-gum’s portrayal of the justice-seeking, chaotic former boxer, Yoon Dong-ju, has been garnering all praises for yet another different role. Bo-gum’s Dong-ju is an Olympic gold medalist and now a cop who goes crazy when it comes to catching the criminals, even hurting himself while running and jumping from rooftops to do his job. However, it’s not Good Boy’s Dong-ju or When Life Gives You Tangerines’ Gwan-sik, but a show from 2015 where Park Bo-gum gave one of his brilliant performances.

Bo-gum played a serial killer in a show called Hello Monster, also known as I Remember You. His character depicted a wide range of emotions, from an innocent smile that could make you empathetic toward him to a sinister smile that could send chills down your spine.

More on this in our story.

Hello Monster introduced the audience to Park Bo-gum’s range of acting

In Hello Monster, Bo-gum played the character of Lee Min, who grows up thinking that his older brother has abandoned him, filling his heart with anger. He becomes a successful lawyer but also a serial killer, who hunts down the people who have abandoned someone and kills them; this is his way of justice that he has learned after being raised by another serial killer.

Unlike Good Boy, where Bo-gum appears to be the most justice-oriented person with a heart of gold, the character of Lee Min in Hello Monster is defined by the childhood trauma that he is living with. Lee Min had always shown a psychopathic tendency since he was a child, when he used to draw sketches of weird and bloody stuff and was cruel toward animals. However, his mistakes were always covered by his older brother, Lee Hyun (Seo In-guk), resulting in his father thinking that Lee Hyun is the monster that needs to be tamed and locks him in the basement.

After killing their father, D.O.’s Joon-young takes Lee Min with him, who didn’t try to control Min’s psychopathic tendencies, which resulted in him growing up to be a serial killer. After watching When Life Gives You Tangerines and Good Boy, it is hard to think of Bo-gum playing a sinister character, but he gives a scene-stealing performance in the drama.

Bo-gum’s Lee Min/Sun-ho was not a simple character. His personality is shaped by his anger toward his brother abandoning him. Therefore, when he finds his brother again, we can see a glimpse of how Lee Min would have turned out if he had gone with Joon-young. Bo-gum’s Lee Min becomes the central character for Joon-yong and Lee Hyun’s difference in thought, where one thinks that Min would have turned out to be a killer wherever he would have lived, whereas Hyun thinks his brother would have become a good person if he were raised in a better environment.

The nature vs. nurture debate about psychopaths is the crux of Hello Monster. And Bo-gum gives one of the most memorable performances of someone aware of his evil tendencies who wants to get rid of them for good but struggles with it. After playing characters whose smiles have fluttered many hearts this year, Bo-gum’s performance in Hello Monster, where his facial expressions change just like his inner thoughts of good vs. bad, shows the range of the acting of one of the best Korean actors of this generation.

We should not be surprised if in the future, Bo-gum plays a villainous character on the opposite end of the spectrum of characters he is playing now.

More about Good Boy

Apart from Park Bo-gum, the series also stars Kim So-hyun, Lee Sang-yi, Heo Sung-tae, and Tae Won-seok, who are all ex-athletes and part of a special team in the police force tasked to catch criminals.

Good Boy has become the new top K-drama with every episode it releases on Prime Video and is a must-watch not just for Bo-gum’s performance but for all of the stellar cast and narrative.

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Also Read: We Were Liars cast & character guide: Who plays whom in the Prime Video psychological thriller based on the E. Lockhart novel?

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