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Sep. 2nd, 2021 10:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsOver the summer we've been watching Vincenzo, the Netflix kdrama starring Song Joong-ki (of Sungkyunkwan Scandal and Space Sweepers fame, among others) as an Italian-Korean mafia consigliere who's moved back to Korea after a falling-out with his adopted Italian mob boss brother, where he plans to extract a secret stash of gold from under a rundown shopping center and then use it to set up a new life in Malta.
In the A-plot, Vincenzo meets the nonprofit lawyer who has an office in the shopping center and his energetic but amoral daughter, who works for an evil Big Law firm that's on retainer for the the even more evil Babel Corporation; for reasons of his own, Vincenzo makes it a personal quest to help the nonprofit law firm take Babel down. The battle between Vincenzo and Babel exposes the hypocrisy within every one of Korea's institutions and forces the lawyers on both sides to get their hands increasingly dirty, as the conflict escalates into an all-out war.
In the B-plot, the rest of the charming group of misfits who maintain shops in Vincenzo's new strip mall headquarters -- a children's piano teacher, a modern dance choreographer working on his zombie-inspired magnum opus, a cranky tailor, a pair of married pawnshop owners, a ramen shop owner and her delinquent son, a fake-Italian restaurateur, a couple of monks, and a rogue undercover SIS agent with a Mafia fetish -- collectively decide that they are now his Animal Crossing villagers. He is responsible for solving all their problems and in return they will bring him small useless gifts!
(It is important to note that the villagers also all have skills -- some more secret than others -- that can be utilized in the battle against Big Babel. It's amazing the number of problems that can be solved with a zombie-inspired modern dance piece.)
Vincenzo is .... an incredibly enjoyable show. It's very funny, extremely mood-whiplashy, and in many ways deeply surreal. "It's a bit like a Coen brothers movie," I said, at one point, attempting to describe it to somebody. "It's like, of course you shouldn't do an American remake, but if you did, you could cast Steve Buscemi as Vincenzo --" Then everyone else in the conversation who'd seen Vincenzo immediately shouted me down because it's a frequent and important plot point that Vincenzo is devastatingly hot and literally everyone who meets him falls madly in love with him.
Anyway, my point is: it's an Experience.
I also want to take a second to talk about the villains, because they're really good villains, by which I mean they are absolutely unrepentantly unredeemable in a way that is meaty and fun to watch. I especially want to shout out evil lawyer Choi Myung-hee, who has spent most of her career doing dirty work for mediocre men she doesn't respect, and finds increasing job satisfaction in her new role committing increasingly-less-secondhand murders as second-in-command to a legit sociopath: she loves winning! unlike many cinematic henchwomen she is neither anything approaching a love interest nor a surrogate mom for Babel's head (not pictured because his identity is a spoiler), they just have a deep professional respect for each other's evil competence, and it's not at all touching, because they're both just truly awful people, but it's really enjoyable to see on a screen.
For the first fifteen episodes or so our grade for the show was at a solid 95% (minus five percent for the moderate homophobia in the episode where Vincenzo reluctantly agrees to honeypot an evil gay chaebol.) In the last five episodes or so it lost another five percent for the contortions that the show had to go through after a certain point to justify Vincenzo not just killing the ultimate villains the third or fourth time he had the opportunity to do so, which would have prevented several heavily foreshadowed deaths; in the final episode we subtracted five more points for a.) some really, truly gratuitous death scenes b.) getting its thematic arguments muddled and c.) the fact that a flight out of the country via hot air balloon was heavily foreshadowed all through the back half of the show -- Vincenzo was indeed personally handed a ticket to catch the country's top tier escape balloon service! -- and yet never did we actually see anyone take Chekhov's hot air balloon. We were robbed.
Nonetheless, 85% is still a really solid grade, and overall all of us would recommend the show for a good time! Who doesn't want to see a dazzlingly hot mafia consigliere reluctantly accept responsibility for an Animal Crossing island?
In the A-plot, Vincenzo meets the nonprofit lawyer who has an office in the shopping center and his energetic but amoral daughter, who works for an evil Big Law firm that's on retainer for the the even more evil Babel Corporation; for reasons of his own, Vincenzo makes it a personal quest to help the nonprofit law firm take Babel down. The battle between Vincenzo and Babel exposes the hypocrisy within every one of Korea's institutions and forces the lawyers on both sides to get their hands increasingly dirty, as the conflict escalates into an all-out war.
In the B-plot, the rest of the charming group of misfits who maintain shops in Vincenzo's new strip mall headquarters -- a children's piano teacher, a modern dance choreographer working on his zombie-inspired magnum opus, a cranky tailor, a pair of married pawnshop owners, a ramen shop owner and her delinquent son, a fake-Italian restaurateur, a couple of monks, and a rogue undercover SIS agent with a Mafia fetish -- collectively decide that they are now his Animal Crossing villagers. He is responsible for solving all their problems and in return they will bring him small useless gifts!
(It is important to note that the villagers also all have skills -- some more secret than others -- that can be utilized in the battle against Big Babel. It's amazing the number of problems that can be solved with a zombie-inspired modern dance piece.)
Vincenzo is .... an incredibly enjoyable show. It's very funny, extremely mood-whiplashy, and in many ways deeply surreal. "It's a bit like a Coen brothers movie," I said, at one point, attempting to describe it to somebody. "It's like, of course you shouldn't do an American remake, but if you did, you could cast Steve Buscemi as Vincenzo --" Then everyone else in the conversation who'd seen Vincenzo immediately shouted me down because it's a frequent and important plot point that Vincenzo is devastatingly hot and literally everyone who meets him falls madly in love with him.
Anyway, my point is: it's an Experience.
I also want to take a second to talk about the villains, because they're really good villains, by which I mean they are absolutely unrepentantly unredeemable in a way that is meaty and fun to watch. I especially want to shout out evil lawyer Choi Myung-hee, who has spent most of her career doing dirty work for mediocre men she doesn't respect, and finds increasing job satisfaction in her new role committing increasingly-less-secondhand murders as second-in-command to a legit sociopath: she loves winning! unlike many cinematic henchwomen she is neither anything approaching a love interest nor a surrogate mom for Babel's head (not pictured because his identity is a spoiler), they just have a deep professional respect for each other's evil competence, and it's not at all touching, because they're both just truly awful people, but it's really enjoyable to see on a screen.
For the first fifteen episodes or so our grade for the show was at a solid 95% (minus five percent for the moderate homophobia in the episode where Vincenzo reluctantly agrees to honeypot an evil gay chaebol.) In the last five episodes or so it lost another five percent for the contortions that the show had to go through after a certain point to justify Vincenzo not just killing the ultimate villains the third or fourth time he had the opportunity to do so, which would have prevented several heavily foreshadowed deaths; in the final episode we subtracted five more points for a.) some really, truly gratuitous death scenes b.) getting its thematic arguments muddled and c.) the fact that a flight out of the country via hot air balloon was heavily foreshadowed all through the back half of the show -- Vincenzo was indeed personally handed a ticket to catch the country's top tier escape balloon service! -- and yet never did we actually see anyone take Chekhov's hot air balloon. We were robbed.
Nonetheless, 85% is still a really solid grade, and overall all of us would recommend the show for a good time! Who doesn't want to see a dazzlingly hot mafia consigliere reluctantly accept responsibility for an Animal Crossing island?
no subject
Date: 2021-09-03 06:22 am (UTC)I am mostly leaving this comment in defense of Steve Buscemi's face, which I quite like.
b.) getting its thematic arguments muddled
Although I am curious about this point.
no subject
Date: 2021-09-06 01:05 pm (UTC)I have two main arguments with the plot in its last act, both mildly spoilery: nf gur cybg fcvaf bhg, Ivapramb unf frireny bccbeghavgvrf gb xvyy gur gjb znva ivyynvaf bhgevtug, naq vafgrnq qrpvqrf ur jnagf gb bepurfgengr zber gbeghebhf naq ntbavmvat qrnguf sbe gurz, juvpu, va gur ynfg rcvfbqr, ur svanyyl fhpprrqf va qbvat. Zl ceboyrz urer vf gjbsbyq: svefg, gurer'f ab rknzvangvba bs gur pbfg bs Ivapramb'f qrfver gb frr uvf rarzvrf fhssre engure guna fvzcyl ryvzvangvat gurz orsber gurl pna qb zber qnzntr, qrfcvgr gur snpg gung uvf qnjqyvat qbrf, va snpg, qb fvtavsvpnag qnzntr; uvf riraghny gevhzcu vf cbfvgvbarq nf n qnex ohg gbgny ivpgbel jura vg arrqrq VZB gb unir zhpu zber bs gur eriratr-gentrql fgvat nobhg vg. Frpbaq, bar bs gur znva gurzrf bs gur fgbel vf gur jnl gur ynjlref jub cnegare jvgu Ivapramb naq gur ynjlref jub cnegare jvgu Onory ner cnenyyryrq va gurve zbir sebz ivbyrapr-ol-cebkl gb ivbyrapr-qverpg, ohg gur urebvar trgf pbairavragyl vawherq naq chg vagb n ubfcvgny va gur ynfg rcvfbqr fb ure unaqf ner pyrna jura Ivapramb haqregnxrf uvf zbfg ubeevslvat npgf. Guvf yrgf gur fubj cbfvgvba Ivapramb nf n fvathyne zbafgre-gb-svtug-zbafgref vafgrnq bs npghnyyl pbzcyrgvat gur urebvar'f nep be qenjvat nal ovttre pbapyhfvbaf nobhg gur erfg bs gur pnfg.
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Date: 2021-09-03 07:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-09-03 07:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-09-03 07:35 am (UTC)(I just texted a friend like "we need to watch Space Sweepers!" after a year of Becca telling me I need to watch Space Sweepers based on this news)
no subject
Date: 2021-09-03 07:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-09-03 07:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-09-06 01:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-09-03 07:29 am (UTC)"And I still can’t tell if what we were getting was "We wanted to do a gay seduction scene with our hero on a horse in tight jodhpurs for fanservice, but we had to contextualise it like THAT because otherwise the studio bosses would never wear it" or "We wanted to show how late-stage capitalism coupled with institutionalised homophobia brings forth monsters" or "This is a twenty episode arc about someone finding a lot more about themselves than they ever suspected or wanted to know, and bisexuality is just a station along that journey." Or a mix of all of them and a lot of others I can’t get because I’m not Korean."
Having reviewed it, I think this comment still holds up (the friend, having watched the scene in question, concluded that it was written homophobic but the actors worked like demons to nuance the hell out of it.)
My other recurring (non-spoilery) comment was, "But why doesn't Choi Myung-Hee's Evil Law Firm actually pay her enough to have an apartment with a plumbed in washing machine?" (I loved Evil Law Firm; none of the wildly dysfunctional law firms at which I have worked in the past including The Bastard Git-Faced Spawn of The Devil Law Firm From Hell actually required murder as part of my duties, but the way a truly toxic workplace gradually and inevitably resets the normal meters of those who work there was very recognisable, nonetheless.)
no subject
Date: 2021-09-03 07:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-09-03 07:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-09-06 01:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-09-03 07:36 am (UTC)I'm still slowly making my way through this because of the long episode run times (whyyy can't we go back to the days of 1 hour or shorter eps tvn??), but I do find the wild tonal swings very entertaining. Also, there's a surprising amount of fic on AO3.
no subject
Date: 2021-09-06 01:11 pm (UTC)I promise I didn't forget Inzaghi the pigeon! Inzaghi is evoked through 'HOW TO BEFRIEND A BIRD.' But I felt Inzaghi and Vincenzo's arc was best left as a delightful journey of discovery for the viewer.
I am very excited to investigate the offerings on AO3 >:DDDDD
no subject
Date: 2021-09-03 09:16 am (UTC)That Animal Crossing comparison is a good one, because Vincenzo seems to think he's the lead of The Prisoner and this show might be the point at which those two properties meet.
This show is a weird beast. It veered closer and further away from the themes and dynamics that interested me as it went on, the stupidity of its plots are not always balanced out by how funny the results are and it was weird (but cool) of the writer to invest so much of his meager allotment of character development in EvilCorp.
Speaking of which, between this and Hotel del Luna, I suspect the quickest way to rope me into watching a kdrama these days is to have a woman named Choi hellbent on murder in there. I liked it very much that the show painted Choi Myung-hee as a very different tragic figure from Vincenzo, in that his tragedy is very boring and hers is that the Cold War is over and you can't build a respectable career out of waterboarding trade unionists anymore, and her Romantic but unromantic relationship with [spoiler] was just about the highlight of the show for me. They even let the actor act in some of his scenes with her -- I feel bad for the guy, they should have just let him do that from the beginning. Choi's relationship with Hong Cha-young sparked a vid idea, but who knows if it'll ever get made, the woman is ten reels of bad news and I keep getting distracted by how cute she is.
c.) the fact that a flight out of the country via hot air balloon was heavily foreshadowed all through the back half of the show -- Vincenzo was indeed personally handed a ticket to catch the country's top tier escape balloon service! -- and yet never did we actually see anyone take Chekhov's hot air balloon
... That writer has some nerve, tell you what.
no subject
Date: 2021-09-06 01:20 pm (UTC)(Though I regret, conversely, that in the back half we lose a lot of Cha-young's dynamic with both of them, I was really invested in that being a major part of her arc. Ah well.)
NOT! ONE! BADLY-CGI'D! HOT AIR BALLOON!!!!
no subject
Date: 2021-09-09 06:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-09-03 01:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-09-06 01:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-09-03 03:23 pm (UTC)A VERY GOOD QUESTION.
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Date: 2021-09-06 01:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-09-03 09:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-09-06 01:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-09-03 09:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-09-03 10:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-09-06 01:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-09-04 12:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-09-06 01:35 pm (UTC)I think you would really enjoy the show -- it's like, not quite Baccano! vibes, but a definite cousin, you know? Somewhere between Baccano, Fargo, and Kung Fu Hustle.
no subject
Date: 2021-09-08 03:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-09-11 05:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-09-10 05:37 pm (UTC)Then I read a few of your other Kdrama reviews and I enjoyed them, too. So I decided to subscribe to you so I won't miss the next one. :)
no subject
Date: 2021-09-11 05:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-11-01 07:15 am (UTC)I just finished, and for once, I really wished I been spoiled (about the absence of balloon getaways, and about how dark the final episode would get). Still enjoyed it overall, ohg V gubhtug Ivapramb fubhyq unir qvrq va gur svany fprar. Nsgre gur gbegher, V qvqa'g ernyyl jnag uvz gb trg n unccl raqvat...