(Mini Series) The Apartment Job - A Delightful and Enjoyable Long Con Crime Comedy Series

This series was intriguing for me due to its seemingly interesting and fun premise. However it was not an original Netflix and the episodes were made available once a week. So I waited till its completion before starting to watch. Its last episode was released on 16 August but I only began two days later and finished it on Sunday. OK then, let's just get right to it.

Brief Story Line

Park Hae-gang (Ji Sung - The Judge Returns TV series, Watcha Wearing? etc) was a former gangster boss who got into trouble and was forced to look for huge amount of money in very short time. Together with his loyal subordinates  Gyeong-nam (Jeong Soon-won - Dream, The Dream Life of Mr. Kim TV series etc), Je-gi (Hwang Hee - Tale of the Nine Tailed1938 TV series etc) and Big Guy (Kim Kyu-won), they decided to do a long con in the True Value apartment complex as suggested by former apartment Building Manager nicknamed Lizard (Kim Won-hae - Trigger mini series, The Trauma Code: Heroes on Call TV series etc). In order to fulfill their mission, Hae-gang enlisted the help from failed law student Kang Ha-ri (Ha Yoon-kyung - Lost, Hospital Playlist TV series etc) who was willing to do role play for money.

However to achieve their target, they had to face lot of difficulties including the busybody neighbor Jang Suk-jin (Moon So-ri - Seoul Vibe, When Love Gives You Tangerines TV series etc) and later the very wealthy owner of penthouse unit Lee Chung-won (Park Byung-eun - The Moon, Hyper Knife TV series etc). While working on this job though, they encountered a much bigger conspiracy and high level corruption that affected their lives.

So what would happen to Hae-gang and friends and how would the story conclude? You could find out in this series.

End of Brief Story Line

Well just as expected, this series really did have interesting story. I got to be honest though, the early part of the first episode seemed a bit confusing as I was unable to guess where it was heading. But slowly I had better understanding and was finally clear on the "apartment job" by the end of that episode. From that moment on it was focusing on the mission to do the long con which was pretty hilarious at times. It would not be fun though if the plot was dragged for too long and I found this series to be good in expanding the story after few episodes. 

After two third of the story, the series became a bit more serious as the more vicious enemies started to show their true colors and endangering the lives of Hae-gang's team. The last few episodes got few twists that made the series got even more interesting. Though it might seem very shocking but I already had a feeling it would happen and did not really surprise me (which I am sure it would not be for my wife either as she was still watching when I wrote this post). The series had a pretty satisfying ending. Apart from missing a tiny detail on the fate of the main villain, I thought the rest were quite conclusive. 

The amazing thing about this series was it was not adapted from any other works like novel or webtoon. So it was purely the creativity of the writer Kim Yoon-young (screenwriter of My Strange Hero and Sweet Palpitations TV series). The series itself was directed by Jo Yong Won (Sketch TV series). For a limited series (as categorized by Netflix), this one had 12 episodes overall with duration of a little over 1 hour each. As I said above, this was not a Netflix original which would explain the various product placements that luckily was not up to the level of too extreme. 

The cast did wonderful job in the series to my opinion as they managed to provide many ridiculous & funny moments. Ji Sung was perfect in this role as did his team, but the one that really caught my attention was Kim Won-hae who was really convincing as Lizard. Aside from the above, there were plenty of additional characters such as current President of Resident Representative Seo Kang-won (Baek Hyun-jin - The Policeman Lineage, Crash TV series etc), Ha-ri's older sister Ha-jeong (Ryu Hyun-kyung - Fairy, The Frog TV series etc), director of apartment management office Choi Yung-jae (Jung Seung-gil - Unfinished, Ca$hero TV series etc), Gyeong-nam's son Gyeong-buk (Kim Han-gyeol), Hae-gang's boss Yong-man (Jung Jin-young - A Year End Medley, The Art of Sarah mini series etc) and many more. 

Aside from the hilarious scenes and fun ways to complete the long con, the series had some action sequence which was not extraordinarily violent or totally awesome type but enough to add some spice. It also had few darker moments and the usual dramatic scenes though not up to the level of melodramatic. Overall this was an enjoyable series for me where it provided lots of fun moments which rouse my wife's curiosity as I laughed quite frequently (hence she started watching just 2 days ago). As someone living in an apartment, the topic added the element of interest for me on top of the obvious entertainment value. So if you are interested to watch a pleasant series that was fun, with plenty of laugh out loud moments combined with little bit of action and a long con story that developed into something else, then this one will be perfect for you. But if your preference is the melodramatic kind or dark series with lot of action, then this one would not be to your liking.

Mike's movie moments rating: 4 out of 5 stars