For his first foray into the world of series, Kim Jee-woon, director of 2 sisters, A bittersweet life… chooses to adapt a fantastic webtoon where it is a question of hacking memories and scanning brains to find clues. Take it or leave it. Either we will judge the subject and the staging completely absurd, or we will let ourselves slip into this virtual questioning and to say the least, singular. 
The story
When Koh Se-Won (Lee Sun-Kyun) was a child, his mother died in a car accident. He then decided to become a scientist and specialize in the field of the brain. Diagnosed as autistic, he is a genius who retains everything he reads or sees. One day, a mysterious person contacts him and asks him to extract information from the brain of a man who has committed suicide. Koh Se-Won agreed, but failed. A few days later, he behaves differently and realizes that he has acquired memories and character traits of the dead man. (Asianwiki)
Technical fact sheet
Original title Dr. 브레인 (South Korea) Based on Dr. Brain by Hongjacga Genre: Drama, Science fiction Directed by Kim Jee-woon Starring : Lee Sun-kyun, Lee Yoo-young, Park Hee-soon, Seo Ji-hye, Lee Jae-won, Uhm Tae-goo
Impressions
Kim Jee-Woon appreciates overflow. Fill the screen with fights, blood, gore, horror, feelings… Whatever the situation, it clashes with the limits of our television, the screen becomes like an indiscreet window that is not satisfied with an isolated fact. It reinforces anxiety by a lack of space. It is not without some surprise that we discover the first series of our beloved director. Moreover, after a few minutes we wonder where he went, because despite the saturated colors and filters that enhance the light wonderfully, the image seems as empty as a no man's land in the middle of nowhere. The story presents itself in a quirky way. It will therefore be necessary to hang on to fully understand. But understand what? Sewon is a neuroscientist diagnosed with the autism spectrum. He was born with a brain abnormality that isolates him from society. He is completely withdrawn but still manages to live a more or less normal life with his wife and son. Discovering that the latter suffers from the same pathology, he devotes his life to research with a specific goal: to understand his own brain and that of his son. To do this, he is developing a technology that can synchronize two brains. Until then, so be it. But suddenly, we see ourselves immersed in the sets of old Star Trek, with inexplicable machines filled with all kinds of small lights whose operation will remain a mystery forever. 
Lee Sun-Kyun is always so honest! He always throws himself without the slightest a priori behind his character. His strength of character spreads outside the television, his voice imposes itself and implants, promising a consistent story and a quality moment. So, seeing him all serious surrounded by all this implausible material, takes us a step back. But… good… The plot promises to be interesting. When he synchronizes his brain (no matter how) with someone else's, he comes back from experience with some of the character traits of the person being solicited. Memories, some skills… The creator of the series makes such a nod to Sense 8, that it would be better to accept right away that the author has fished out this very good idea and that he has the right to use it for other purposes. Sense 8, which unfortunately went "peanuts" and no longer found funding for a third season, deserves all kinds of allusions. It is at this moment, when we have just made a reason, that Sewon finds no better than to enter the brain of a cat. No, but, why not… He then manages to jump and see like a feline. Why did Pulp Fiction allow Tarantino to become Tarantino? Simply because, at no time, did the director allow us to forget that we were seeing a comic book. It was strange, we were witnessing the transformation of inanimate cartoons, almost like Cinderella's fairy and her squash and we found incredible pleasure in following their crazy adventures, possible precisely because it was a comic book. All this to tell you that seeing Lee Sun-Kyun jump like a cat gives a feeling of ridicule and WTF that we can no longer get rid of. 
Stuffed with scientific jargon that parasitizes the series more than feeding it, we cling to the plot. A detective is interested in the accident that claimed the life of Sewon's son. The scientist, who had never believed in this theory despite his wife's warnings, begins to synchronize right and left to understand what happened to his son. The detective in question is played by Park Hee-Soon, whom we just saw bathed in testosterone in My Name. This time, it seems to drown in the fumes of a joint. These are just roles. It is not about the actor but the character but, Park Hee-Soon seems contaminated by this apathetic, sterilized and sanitized atmosphere that bothers us from the beginning. This lethargic and amorphous atmosphere… Is it set up to make us understand the pathology of the scientist? Does she want to synchronize us with her brain? Is this a very tacit way of showing us your emotions?
Conclusion
Sewon is looking for his son. We are looking for Kim Jee-Woon. It's a shame because we recognize, in the middle of all these rather unstructured elements, a desire to make it clear that Sewon ended up seeing his flaws in the brains of others. And that it allowed him to change and have emotions. But it's so buried in an amalgam of subjects launched like meteorites that we get lost! We recognize the camera movements of the director but, with such intermittentness that it seems that he is playing hide and seek, that he is only present from time to time on the set. The photography is beautiful, it sometimes feels like Highlander's landscapes. Sean Connery could appear any moment in the middle of this fog and neon green. If the series wanted to remain faithful to the webtoon, it sins by a cruel lack of development. Kim Jee-Woon only gives us aborted glimpses. A few touches of horror. Yes, but no… The new data acquired by Sewon disappears when we had barely seen it. You can only catch them on the fly. We do not ask anything at the end, even if the specter of Lucy and her "we are only knowledge" of Mr. Besson hovers over the fall… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZK2nevD7cWA&ab_channel=AppleTV
