Brief Story Line
Set in the near future, a group of criminals and ex military personnel join together to do a heist on the Korean Mint where money is printed. The group was led by the person nicknamed Professor (Yoo Ji-tae - Healer TV series, The Swindlers etc) with 8 other people using their own nicknames based on cities of the world. They consisted of the ruthless Berlin (Park Hae-soo - Squid Game TV series, By Quantum Physics: A Nightlife Venture etc), the former North Korean soldier Tokyo (Jeon Jong-seo - The Call, Burning etc), the drilling expert Moscow (Lee Won-jong - My Boss is a Million Youtuber TV series etc) and his son Denver (Kim Ji-hoon - Rich Family's Son TV series etc), the young hacker Rio (Lee Hyun-woo - To the Beautiful You TV series etc), the con artist Nairobi (Jang Yoon-ju - Three Sisters etc) and the gangster brothers Oslo (Lee Kyu-ho) & Helsinki (Kim Ji-hun).
During the heist, the group took some hostages including the director Young-min (Park Myung-hoon - Deliver Us from Evil etc), an employee Mi-sun (Lee Joo-bin - Ga Doo Ri's Sushi Restaurant TV series etc), a high school student Anne Kim (Lee Si-woo - Be My Boyfriend TV series etc) and some others. Due to the extent of the crime, the government form a joint task force to handle the hostage situation. They were led by the South Korean negotiator Seon Woo-jin (Kim Yun-jin - Lost TV series, Shiri etc) and North Korean Captain Cha Moo-hyuk (Kim Sung-oh - Secret Zoo, The Pirates: The Last Royal Treasure etc).
As the hostage situation continued, we would be shown the battle of wits and strategy between the Professor and the intelligent Woo-jin.
End of Brief Story Line
I said above that I have watched the original Spanish series Money Heist which I really liked and admired due to the incredible strategy & complexities of the heist, plus the interaction of the characters. It also had fantastic actions and filled with some intense moments where the gang received our full attention and understandably great affection, even though they were supposed to be the bad guys.
I always thought that this series would be a spin-off or a sequel where people on the other side of the world were inspired by what happened in Spain and replicate their action in their own country. However, it turned out that the series was a nearly identical remake with the same characters and same problems. The writers opted to make slight changes here and there, but otherwise it felt like a duplicate series just set in different country & language. This made me feel a bit disappointed as I was hoping for a different type of heist and twist/surprises since that was what made the Spanish series truly amazing and exceptional.
After watching the first few episodes, there was no twist that could surprise me anymore and I was at the stage where I kept on complaining about this to my wife. Fortunately though, there was finally an alteration to the heist which resulted to a quite major implication in the story development. It was something that made me feel more excited and eager to see how the series would continue in the second part. Yes, Netflix only released 6 episodes and till the day I post this, there was no information yet on when the remaining episodes would be shown.
As a standalone series, this is actually a well executed one with the wonderful heist story. The focus on South and North Korea reunification was something culturally specific that set itself apart from the original series. In addition, there were few melodramatic scenes that you would commonly see in a South Korean drama series. It has high production value with large cast, realistic settings and few cool action scenes. The cast did a fine job too, particularly Park Hae-soo as Berlin and Yoo Ji-tae as the professor. I even like the performance of Kim Ji-hoon who reminded me a lot with Denver (when he laughed) and Park Myung-hoon who was really good as the obnoxious irritating director, while the rest did their job adequately.
Now if you have not seen the original series, I am very sure that you would love this one as you enjoy the twist and turn and do not know what to expect. Which is why I could still enjoy the part where there was different twist that I did not see coming. But once you do comparison (like I did), chances are you would love the Spanish version more. One of the biggest alteration that I was not really happy was the way they tone down the genius of the Professor, where he was already anticipating every move the police would make, while in here it seemed he was modifying it as they go along. Perhaps they did not want to show him as such a superior mastermind?
Btw you could not blame people for comparing, as it is only natural for such high profile series. I strongly believe that if this series was not an almost complete remake but rather a sequel/spin-off like I had thought and hoped for, I would have been way more satisfied. So let us wait for the second part to be released and I sincerely hope that it had more different twists to surprise us and probably different ending to make it much more interesting.
Mike's movie moments rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
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