Brief Story Line
Yoon Dong-ju (Park Bo-gum - Wonderland, When Life Gives You Tangerines TV series etc) was former boxing gold medalist who became police officer through special recruitment program but always had problems due to his hot headedness. Along with him, there were also Ji Han-na (Kim So-hyun -Unforgettable, My Lovely Liar TV series etc) former shooting champion, Kim Jong-hyeon (Lee Sang-yi - Love in the Big City, Bloodhounds TV series etc) who gained silver medal from fencing and Shin Jae-hong (Tae Won-seok - My Puppy, The player TV series etc) former disc throwing athlete that were part of the similar program. They were led by Captain Go Man-sik (Heo Sung-tae - Crash TV series, Hitman: Agent Jun etc) who was former wrestling medalist several years earlier and jointly formed the Special Crime Investigation unit.
The unit was initiated to handle a specific case that Dong-ju was heavily involved from beginning and centered around Korea Customs Service employee Min Ju-yeong (Oh Jung-se - Hi-Five, Death's Game TV series etc) who was not as simple as he looked. As they investigated further, it became clear that the case would bring danger to every member of the team and those who were close with them.
So how would the story conclude? You could find out in this series.
End of Brief Story Line
Now that was an entertaining series. To be honest, the first few episodes did not exactly hit it for me cause I felt it did not seem to focus enough on the case but more towards Dong-ju's struggle to become proper police officer. Despite its promising ending of first episode, subsequently the pace seemed to be a bit slow with more romance & comedic elements shown. But as the story progressed, especially since the end of episode 6, the series became really exciting and the action more frequent. No wonder it got praised due to its blockbuster-level production cause the fight sequence was totally awesome and enjoyable to watch. The characters also grew on me after they were given more background.
Aside from the interesting action sequence, the villain was amazing as well. Oh Jung-se really killed it as this seemingly common & soft spoken civil servant who was slowly revealed to be anything but usual. The way he portrayed his role was really good and my wife who had seen him many times before had given praise for his acting capabilities in the past, which he showed in here again. Meanwhile the 5 lead cast each had his/her own charm. Park Bo-gum was admired due to his prominent shift from dramatic role to this new action star, while Kim So-hyun was shown as strong & independent female character. I also liked Lee Sang-yi's character who was the definition of really good guy plus the large built but really gentle family man Jae-yong portrayed by Tae Won-seok (although he was given the least screen time). However the funniest one would be Heo Sung-tae who seemed to be unlucky from start to finish.
Now in addition to the main cast, the series had many important supporting characters. Among them were the police commissioner Jo Pan-yeol (Kim Eung-soo - The Spy Gone North, Nine Puzzles TV series etc), drug dealer known as Drugmon (Lee Ho-jung - Hostage: Missing Celebrity, Moving TV series etc), Korean-Russian mafia Leo (Go Joon - Midnight Runners, The Fiery Priest TV series etc), former Dong-ju's coach Oh Jong-gu (Jung Man-sik - Revolver, Rampant TV series etc), Mrs. Jeong (Seo Jeong-yeon - Juror 8, My Demon TV series etc) who owned noodle restaurant and was like mother figure to Dong-ju and plenty others. They gave decent performance and added depth to the story. The series itself was created by Lee Dae-il who previously wrote series like Life on Mars and Chief of Staff. The episodes was directed by Shim Na-yeon who was nominated for awards on her works for Beyond Evil and The Good Bad Mother TV series. It seemed she was getting applauds here as well.
Like a lot of K-drama series, this one had 16 episodes overall and it was not specifically produced for streaming service but amazingly it was available on Netflix & Disney+ in its origin country, but released globally (including Indonesia) through Prime Video. It has pretty long duration of a little over one hour for each episode which did take some time to finish the full season. There was action scene in every episode of the series with my favorites were the neon fights in episode one, tunnel fights in episodes 8-9 and the climax in 15tth to 16th episode. One thing that my wife and I noticed a bit too extreme was the seemingly super powered Dong-ju who was repeatedly got beaten up but almost always able to fight back like it was nothing. Plus I think the health issue was never properly resolved, which was a bit unexpected considering it was a major issue through out the second half of the series.
Overall this was a series that my wife and I enjoyed as it was fun, got a lot of entertaining action scenes and a real bad villain. It has the usual drama, some romance and sometimes comedic moments. The early episodes were OK to my opinion, but the latter part was way more exciting and fun to watch. I could certainly see the appeal of the series to general audience, especially for Park Bo-gum's fans who are a lot (even my wife changed her view of him after seeing this series). So if you are looking for an enjoyable action comedy series with interesting premise of former national athletes who became a special police unit fighting crimes against a multi layered bad guys, then you would have a lot of fun watching this like me and my wife. Happy watching!
Mike's movie moments rating: 4 out of 5 stars
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