title: vincenzo
cast: song joong ki, jeon yeo bin, ok taecyeon, kwak dong yeon
genre: life drama with a bit comedy
let me warn you if you're waiting for a romance drama, then you'd better skip it. there are only two kissing scenes in the whole drama. anyway, if you're thinking is a straight thriller/ crime drama, you might be mistaken as well.
vincenzo cassano (song joong ki) is a italian-born-korean mafia lawyer known as consigliere who fled to korea after being betrayed by his "brother in the mafia". he decided to make plan for his retirement. during his time in italy, he's helped a chinese tycoon hid his gold. there were only two people that knew about the stash besides the tycoon himself. however, the tycoon died suddenly and no one seemed to know about his gold stash. so he contacted his previous colleague, cho young woon (choi young joon) and told him about his plan to dig the gold, which is stashed under the basement of geumga plaza. even though the deed was named under mr. cho, but there was this company, babel group that has been buying all land surrounding geumga plaza for a new development plan. the company has been persuading all tenants in geumga plaza as well, but they resisted. the tenants were getting help from hong yoo chan (yoo jae myung), a lawyer from jipuragi law firm. however, his own daughter, hong cha young (jeon yeo bin), lawyer from wusang law firm, was their opponent. and though the father has been fighting fair and square, that's not the case with his daughter. being in wusang, she's told to use all ways possible as long as they won the case. and so she did. she made her own father lost the first trial.
when vincenzo arrived and being introduced to the tenants by mr. cho, all the tenants plus yoo chan were suspicious of vincenzo's motive. but his action defending the tenants from the gangster that babel hired made them believe him a bit. anyway, after that, several misfortunate events started to happen. mr. cho was threatened in his own home that pushed him into signing off geumga plaza to babel gangster. and yoo chan was murdered in an accidents. the police concluded that it was a mere accident, but vincenzo was suspicious that it wasn't natural. however, her father's death was a shocking event to cha young. she found out that wusang has been tainted her father as a corrupt lawyer that accepted bribe. somehow that event opened her eyes and she realized how bad wusang was and quit her job at wusang and joined jipuragi. she decided to fight for the people her father has been fighting for. with the help from vincenzo.
this is where the story became interesting. instead of going the conventional way to win a case, both vincenzo and cha young invented tricks to turn things around for their favour. with help from the whole geumga plaza, they managed to turn around the first trial. however, things became a bit heated up because choi myung hee (kim yeo jin), a former prosecutor from southeast district prosecutor office, joined wusang as a senior lawyer. she was more ruthless than cha young's former wusang CEO, han seung hyuk (jo han chul). geumga team's first attack was babel chemical that produced opioid painkiller drug, the case that yoo chan lost because of cha young. they managed to burn down the warehouse with the help from the victim's family. that gave a big blow to babel. we also saw that the current babel's chairman, jang han seo (kwak dong yeon) was not the real chairman as he suffered a big blow from a masked man after the warehouse has burnt down.
things became a bit complicated as vincenzo still have a hidden agenda, to dig the gold. and somehow the tenants found out about the gold from a stranger. the stranger claimed to overheard the conversation from the former workers whom obviously got killed afterward. at first the tenants laughed at the idea, but they became curious and started to search for the gold themselves. oh i also forgot to mention that vincenzo's arrival in korea was noticed by ahn gi seok (im chul soo), a team leader of international security intelligence service. he went undercover in geumga plaza to observe vincenzo. but as he kept doing it, he became mesmerised by vincenzo and helped him with his resource.
however, babel has been fighting back. the victim families were murdered. as well as the original gangster. they were almost killed as well but after they're safe, they stood against babel and defended geumga tenants. things got even more complicated when both jipuragi and geumga found out that there's a guillotine file hidden among the gold under the basement. the file had a list of all corruptors in the government, from the police department, prosecutor, even to assemblymen and their colleagues. also, mr.cho was apparently a worker from intelligence service as well. he was appointed to get the guillotine file but the prosecutor betrayed him. vincenzo and mr. cho was managed to get into the vault initially but they got into altercation for a bit but later they got along again as vincenzo found out about mr. cho background as intelligence officer. however, the only way to get into the vault was gone so they had to find another way. vincenzo hid the truth that he kept the file himself and planned to use it to fight babel. they also found out that the hacker that built the vault system has been near them all along. it was one of the tenants!
long story short, things got more heated up as the real CEO showed himself. it was jang han seok (ok taecyon), former colleagues of cha young in wusang. he was even more evil and has been one since his school days apparently. together with myung hee, they made a scary pair. han seok managed to kill vincenzo's real mom. while han seo was jumping ship and helped vincenzo. seung hyuk was trying to save himself but ended up getting nothing. it's been back and forth betweeen geumga team and babel all over the season, and it wasn't until the last two episodes that vincenzo decided to take things into his own hands. han seok kidnapped both han seo and cha young, ended up killing han seo while vincenzo and cha young managed to escape. vincenzo then decided to go all out and kidnapped myung hee and burnt her to death. while han seok was killed by a slow and painful way, by a drilled that was piercing to his body slowly and got eaten by crows halfway.
what i like:
- they managed to keep things between cha young and vincenzo just the way it is. though there were hints about their romance, but at the end, they end up make people guessing what's next for them. halfway i thought they would go the typical way and made vincenzo feel for cha young head over heels, but i'm glad they didn't do that.
- though vincenzo appeared as softie as first, at the end he kept his fierce killing way by giving painful death to both myung hee and han seok.
- the whole geumga gang is awesome. they seemed to be weird at first, but they were the comedians in the drama. they give a cheerful and uplifting atmosphere to the drama. their fighting spirit is something else as well. and not forgetting the former gangster crew. all of them are really entertaining.
- the storyline is interesting as well. each episode gave a twisting turn. sometimes geumga will win, and sometimes they will lose to babel. you'd be up and down throughout the drama. like feeling devastated when the family victims getting murdered but then shout in joy when realizing that han seo was just pretending all along and keep supporting vincenzo.
what i don't like:
- typical "people with money get the power" storyline. how han seok used his money to get away from murder charges years ago and even up until vincenzo arrived he kept winning his way using his money.
- corrupt people in the police department and prosecutor story again. this one is more devastating though. with people like myung hee using all her might to get the result that she wanted, even if it meant killing someone else.
- cha young is a bit over acting sometimes. how a lawyer could act like that? i thought lawyers should be deadly serious in doing their job, but she was.. odd. oh well, maybe that's what the writer and director wanted, so i might be mistaken. however, my husband kept complaining that she wasn't a good companion for handsome song joong ki and kept saying that she's average.
rating: 9/10
binge worthy: absolutely
recommended for: fans of song joong ki and ok taecyon, those who like crime story mixed with some life story as well and don't mind the corruption behind it again, and not afraid of some gory scenes since there would be so much bloody scenes and don't mind the minimal romance story.
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