By: Cameron Tyo
August 15, 2023
Spoiler Alert: This review will contain significant spoilers for the show Vincenzo.
Vincenzo is a Korean action-packed crime drama filled with dark screwball comedy and moments of legal drama. The show began on February 20, 2021, and ended on May 2, spanning around three months, consisting of 20 decently long episodes ranging almost about 1 hour and 30 minutes each. I watched this show directly after watching Flower of Evil. After really enjoying that K-drama, I wanted to watch another one that was less psychologically based but more revenge-heavy and gloomier, and this is where I found many recommendations for this particular drama.
The plot of Vincenzo follows Italian mafia member and boss consigliere Vincenzo Cassano (Song Joong-ki), whose real name is Park Jyoo Hyung, as he travels to Korea to tear down a building in Guemga Plaza that hides gold underneath. Eventually, the owner of the building, before his eventual removal, Cho-Yeong-woon (Choi Young-joon), introduces Vincenzo to the many tenants of the building. Eventually, he runs into the Ant Company, whom Babel sent to demolish the building by any means necessary to make way for Babel tower. These events lead Vincenzo to get wrapped up in not only trying to win over Babel for the tenants but finding out about all the evil things the powerful conglomerate has done and has been doing in Korea, such as the incidents with Babel pharmaceuticals and chemicals after his teaming up with lawyer Hong Cha-Young (Jeon Yeo-been) and paralegal Nam Joo-seong (Yoon Byung-hee).
The plot has a very diverse cast of characters, including the villain Jang Han-seok (Ok Taec-yeon), who at first is introduced as Jang Joon-woo, a bumbling and comedy-driven intern of Wusang law firm who is actually the psychopathic, brutal, and calculating CEO of Babel who is using his brother Jang Han-seo (Kwak Dong-yeon) as a puppet giving him directions on what to do as he hides in the shadows. Other main villains include Han Seung-hyeok (Jo Han-chul) and Choi Myeong-hee (Kim Yeo-jin), two lawyers of Wusang who assist the CEO in getting rid of any lawsuits and trifles that might affect Babel by any means necessary. You also have the tenants of Guemga that are all hiding something from Vincenzo, such as Ahn Gi-seok (Im Chul-soo), an executive of the intelligence service, Seo Mi-ri (Kim Yoon-hye), who happens to be an I.T. guru in the form of a hacker, Kwak Hee-soo (Lee Hang-na), a former boxer and many others who seem to have casual lives but are much stronger than they appear.
The events in the story are very suspenseful and yet exciting at the time. Every time Vincenzo goes mafia and threatens someone for information or tells them to do something in order to stop something causing Babel damage, you feel a sense of excitement and joy, and things get even better as the series progresses into the last few episodes. My favorite moments are when Choi gets burnt to death, and Han-seok gets his body drilled every five minutes by the “spear of atonement” until his lungs are punctured for the killing blow in abandoned warehouses. This scene shows Vincenzo’s reasoning that people should be tortured based on their previous actions in life. These ways of torture do a good job of reflecting the morals of the mafia in which Vincenzo lives by. Watching the on-and-off intellectual and violent battle between Babel and the members of Guemga Plaza is super suspenseful and fun to listen to and watch. It also creates a sense of seriousness and danger for the characters throughout each episode showing the lengths Babel goes to in order to hide malicious information about their company. The story knows how to coincide the seriousness of the situation being shown in Vincenzo and the comedy thrown in the show very well as well. The show also does a good job of showing the corruptness of government officials, enunciating the strong impact that Babel has on the world.
I particularly like the character development that some of the characters go through in the show. The most prominent of these is that of Vincenzo Cassano, who at first comes to Korea just to steal money from a Chinese tycoon who died. However, he grows attached to his tenants and the people he works with as he tries to pursue justice for Guemga Plaza while trying to put an end to the Babel company altogether. A lot of the time, Vincenzo is seen to hide his emotions, having a mostly emotionless face despite caring for completing the goal he set for himself, but this all changes when he does that of a mafia and kills or when meeting up with who he discovers to be his mom Oh Kyeong-ja (Yoon Bok-in) where he loses his composure either getting frustrated or sad. Hong Cha-young ultimately wavers to helping the tenants of Guemga after her father, Hong-Yoo-chan (Yoo Jae-myung), is killed by Babel for trying to bring their company down. The tenants who were once concerned about Vincenzo’s personality and loyalty to the plaza become dedicated to him. The final character development I find particularly interesting is of Jang Han-Seo, who, after so much relentless taunting and bullying from his older brother and seeing how he violently gets the things he wants to be done, offers to help Vincezno in getting rid of his brother so he can take over and become an honest CEO of the company.
The pacing in the story, as mentioned before, is great. There is a never-dull moment in the series, and each event that happens does a good job of furthering the battle between Guemga and Babel. From revealing how Babel unwillingly tested subjects with RDU-90 and how people were dying of leukemia because of a toxin substance leak due to poor maintenance of their facilities in court and, ultimately, the illegal ways, Babel uses to drive out tenants from buildings to make ways for such buildings for these subsidiaries something is always being discovered, and things are always happening to each side.
Ultimately I really liked this T.V. series. I liked how well the comedic and serious moments were intertwined with each other. I thought that the chemistry behind the actors and actresses and the acting in general inflected a certain scene’s vibes. The scenes are further heightened by the OST that plays, which is typically suspenseful and filled with violent beats. If anyone has an interest in action dramas relating to the mafia with a dash of legal drama, this is probably the best drama for you to watch. That said, I feel everyone should give this show a chance and watch it. Who knows, you might get into the realm of the crime genre.