as No Way: A Roulette Game Drops on Hulu, a South Korean mystery-thriller crossing noir-ish vibes with our modern-day social media mania, and part of becomeLike a super criminal plot to keep things interesting. Cho Jin-woong stars in No way out As a police detective with an escalating plot that involves mysterious cash rewards, an even more mysterious figure in a fencing mask, and the decisions he makes on the fly that will probably hurt him in the long run. Directed by Choi Kook-hee and written by Lee Soo-jin, No Way: A Roulette Game Also starring are Yoo Jae-myung, Greg Soo, Lee Kwang-soo, Yum Jung-ah and Kim Mu-yeol.
No way – roulette: Stream it or skip it?Â
Opening shot: A roulette wheel spins, and suddenly we’re in a meat freezer, where a deranged, bloody man is hiding. He is found by a man with a knife and it is clear that they know each other.
Summary: “Who will give you a billion won?” The hidden man protests, but his counterpart doesn’t hear him, and in the struggle that ensues Ji-hong cuts off Chang-jae’s (Lee Kwang -soo) ear with a meat slicer. As police detective Baek Jong-sik (Cho Jin-woong) soon learns, this forced organ removal is part of a larger, internet-based conspiracy orchestrated by a nameless masked man. He actually gave Ji-hong a billion won to cut off Chang-ja’s ear. The cash is packed in a case, marked with the same swirling symbol seen on the masked man’s closed helmet. And when Jong-sik finds the case while investigating the incident, he keeps the money instead of accepting it as evidence. In Jong-sik’s personal life, he has debts that no honest man can repay. He has a wife and a teenage daughter, and they will lose their home.
If it’s unethical and just plain bad idea for a detective to link money to a mysterious Internet conspirator who instigates violence-paying schemes among ordinary people, it becomes an even worse idea when the police start on a larger scale. Investigation of the masked man. “You were at the scene,” Jong-sik’s boss asks him. “Did the person have money at home?” Jong-sik refuses this, and thinks about how he’s already spent some of it. Meanwhile, the now earless Chang-jae escapes from the hospital where he was being treated, pieces together Jong-sika’s involvement, and even has video footage of the detective taking the money. When the masked man announces another billion won, this time in a baseball stadium, it erupts as people push past the police barriers to grab whatever cash they can.
“Shall we play the next round?” Jung-sik managed to keep the money he took a secret. But the masked man setups are getting more elaborate. On his social media feed, he spins the roulette wheel again. Tick-tick-tick Past conditions like “cut off ear” and “drowning” and “break arm” finally land on “kill” as the comment field pops off. “There it is,” he announced, the fencing mask in place and his voice altered electronically. “Kill Kim Guk-ho” and I’ll give you 20 billion won. The police can’t believe him. Kim Guk-ho (Yoo Jae-myung) is a high-profile criminal who will be released from prison in a few days. Now the whole country is looking to oust him and collect the cash. Baek Jong-sik will be put on Kim Guk-ho’s defense detail as the criminal’s lawyer and son get involved, and a slick professional hitman known as Mr. Smile (Greg Hsu) travels from Taiwan to Korea to kill. Collect bounties for Kim and yourself.
What show does it remind you of? Yoo Jae-myung, who plays Kim Guk-ho No Way: A Roulette GameThere are also exciting Netflix historical dramas Song of the bandits. And speaking of Netflix, Cho Jin-woong was at the center of the police-and-crime thriller the believer And his The latest sequel.Â
Our Tech: It actually took more than a few minutes to get there No Way: A Roulette Game takes us. But we saw that once his disparate story threads started coming together, we were totally on board. First, there is a Kafka-esque quality to Detective Baek Jong-sik’s predicament. He took money he didn’t have, cash provided by a criminal that was directly linked to the increased bloodshed. Which would be wrong enough from a moral point of view. But isn’t that too much of a good thing to be no good at all? We join Jung-sik as he has to cover his tracks when his superiors introduce him to the next phase of the case, which is made more interesting by the emergence of the masked man himself. He wears garish suits and fencing helmets that broadcast exotic designs. He is obsessed with the social media reaction to his custom-made roulette table and his violent, cash-addled showboating. What’s his deal? Is he even the man behind the mask? And will he target Jung-sik or his family personally, now that the detective has absconded with the money destined for the ear cutter?
Sex and Skin: no one
Farewell Shot: The Masked Man has given his new ultimatum. Kill Kim Guk-ho, and someone a billion won richer. “I don’t care how, but I want you to do it in style” …
Sleeper Star: Oh Woo-ri plays Patrol Officer Park Yoon-jeong with a tremendous amount of glee, and when she gets on Detective Baek’s nerves, we love the energy. Keep trying to find those bad guys, Officer Park!
The most pilot-y line: Masked Man seems to be as much a lover of weirdness and violence as he is a reader of comments. “People who accuse me of not paying, saying it’s aggro, noise marketing and I’m lying. I thought of quitting. But instead, I’ve prepared a generous surprise for you.â€
Our call: Stream it. Releasing the first two episodes of No Way: A Roulette Game It was a good idea at the same time. The series starts slow but quickly builds steam as Baek Jung-sik’s opportunism comes back to haunt him and the Masked Man’s social media schemes take on a new and more deadly dimension.
Johnny Loftus (@glenngangs) is a freelance writer and editor based largely in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media and Nicki Swift.
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