B.A.P. One Shot Review

Disclaimer:  I do not own BAP, I don't own their music.  I don't own their videos.  I am in no way associated with this group.  Please don't sue me for putting my opinion out there!

 Alrighty then!  As a fan, I really enjoyed the singing.  I thought there was a bit much of the rapping (which I've had to just accept from B.A.P.), never my favourite part of kpop songs.  BAP has either the lowest voices of all kpop boy bands or the most strained, trying to be lowest.   I thought One Shot was catchy.

I liked the video, except for the part at about 5:42, where the last singer alive shoots the last guy on the other side and that horrible special effect with the blood spatter breaks the mood by oozing cheese.  It looks more like a camera man was shot than the gangster.  That was the only part I really cringed.

Also, I want to know what kind of gang BAP was.  I mean, are they killers?  Thieves?  Bored kpop idols with too much time and money on their hands? 

  Because, I’m not sure how I feel about the second ending where the kidnapee turns out to be a cop who staged the whole thing.  I mean, if they were just a group of friends who were coerced into stealing $10,000,000 to save a guy’s life, they were set up!  As Eat Your Kimchi pointed out, that's entrapment and completely illegal.  On the other hand, if they were car thieves or a real, murdering, street gang, well then good on the cop!  A little creative rule bending to get them off the street is ok with me!  So my take on the second ending really needs a little back story.  And a little bit beside the point, but still relevant, I'm not sure I’d call the cops if my friend was kidnapped either.  We've all seen enough movies to know how that usually ends.  

Did anyone else notice that they were in America?  With the American money and SWAT team rushing in

 I guess if you were going to kidnap and ransom a guy from a rival gang, this is the gang to do it to.  I mean, look at them!  The makeup, the hair, the feux fur and the bedazzled jacket that says  “rich.”  I’d rather kidnap from them, than say, a real American gang (No offence to the real Asian/American gang members.  I'm not saying they can't be intimidating or dangerous, I'm just saying that BAP isn't)

Maybe they stole more than $10M from that armored truck.  Maybe they spent the extra on clothing? Because before, they wore tank tops and jeans, then it suddenly, woosh! Look at all the bling!

As for the dance, this, on his back, sideways running dance at 2:11 got mixed feelings from me.  On the one hand, it’s new and got my attention and is interesting!  Yay!  On the other hand, it’s probably never been done before for a reason.  I’m not really sure if I like it or not.

 Jury’s still out, leaning toward liking it so long as it stays out of the clubs. As for the main chorus dance, is anyone else reminded of a lizard by the push-up bit?

My boyfriend would like to mention something he thought important.  "One observation, apart from the bunch of partying girls on the yacht there are no other females in the video, not even in the gang, you know, sometimes they do have partners. Although I do think the amount of femininity of the kpop kids is significant enough for an average music video."  Lol, got to love the non-kpop fans.  

 One last observation from me.  BAP has a strange mix of minimalism and excess going on in this video. We’ve got the party on the yacht in the intro, an incredible amount of styling gel, a hummer and a jet.  And then, BAP brings hand guns to rescue their friend, when, if you’ll notice, they have a tank.  I mean, they have a tank and they didn’t use it to get their friend back.  Maybe they deserved the first ending?  

Erm, did the other gang know they had a tank?  I certainly wouldn't mess with a gang that had a tank.

 Great sets!  The subway was a fairly realistic place to make a money for kidnappee transfer, or at least that what Hollywood would have us believe, anyway.  Loved their little concrete room and the car garage and the airport hangar.  It was all very authentically American action flick stuff.

I loved the guys’ faces as their friend gets shot in the first ending.  They were perfect.  This tells me that they’d make better actors than some other kpop idols who have branched out into TV, and who shall remain nameless.

Ok, that second one is fake, but I liked it.

And for the lyrics, they’re all about having one shot to make something of our lives, to “shine the light like Martin Luther King.”  So at first I thought that it was the band who were taking control and being proactive about their lives, but by the end of the second ending I thought that it was the cop who was taking initiative.  He hadn’t waiting to collect enough evidence to arrest the two groups, but instead initiated a kidnapping and theft!  Wow, he didn’t step back on the endless path, but threw himself at the world, as they say in the song.

Congrats BAP on another powerful song.  And for anyone living under a rock who have not seen eat your kimchi's review of this song, here it is (don't sue me for this either, don't own, no associations, etc)