Veteran television director Lee Jae-kyoo balances the most engrossing aspects of the South Korean telenovela with grandiloquent Hong Kong-influenced fight scenes.

For all its spectacle, "The Fatal Encounter" is wanting for profundity.

Moderately captivating, complex and sophisticated with exquisite production values, but too much exposition diminishes the dramatic momentum.

Trying to find where the line is drawn between those we might consider right and wrong proves more compelling than the bevy of swordfights meant to solve their problems once and for all.