K-drama Review: Vincenzo

Vincenzo is the ideal K-drama to watch if you enjoy edgy crime dramas (leavened with a healthy dose of comedy), if you want to watch a show with family members who roll their eyes at romance, or if you prefer to watch dubbed shows rather than reading subtitles, as it’s available in English dub on Netflix.

English Title: Vincenzo (2021)

Writer: Park Jae-beom

Director: Kim Hee-won

Length: 20 Episodes

Tropes: Mafia, Revenge, Morally-grey justice, Locked vault, Crime Drama, Legal Drama, heists, found family.

My Score: 4/5

Description: Vincenzo Cassano (Song Joong-ki) is a Korean-Italian adoptee raised in the Italian mafia. He’s a lawyer and a consigliere for the mafia, the advisor/brains of the organisation. After his boss (his adopted father) dies, Vincenzo returns to Korea to get his hands on a locked vault filled with gold. His only problem: the only way into the vault is to destroy the building (Geumga Plaza) that sits above it. So his first task is to clear all the residents and shop owners out of the building – a task that’s easier said than done. Along the way, Vincenzo makes allies – and he makes enemies, and then he makes even bigger enemies. Because Vincenzo is, at heart, a good guy (though he's willing to use less-than-honest means to protect his friends and serve justice) he ends up working with the residents of Geumga Plaza to take down their biggest enemy of all - a corrupt corporation that has infiltrated the highest levels of government.

If you enjoyed this show, then watch: Healer, Taxi Driver, Behind Your Touch and The Fiery Priest (this last one is by the same screenwriter.)

At 20 episodes, Vincenzo is longer than most recent K-dramas, but there wasn’t a single episode that dragged for me or felt pointless. It’s a fast-paced, high quality drama with a stellar cast (look out for all the familiar faces in the supporting cast!) There’s action, twists, special effects, comedy, drama, and intense emotion in every episode. 

The only reason I didn’t give it a full five stars is that the female lead annoyed me in the first couple of episodes, and the romantic sub-plot wasn't central to the story. I do like a strong central romance! But that’s a me thing rather than a reflection on the show.

For writers, there are a LOT of reasons why you should watch Vincenzo:

The hero: How to write a morally grey anti-hero that readers will fall in love with. Ask yourself: Which scenes show Vincenzo as an anti-hero, and which show him as the good guy? What is the balance between these scenes in each episode? What are his values, and where does he draw the line? How do the writers get viewers rooting for him, no matter what bad deeds he does?

Song Joong-ki as Vincenzo Cassano

The secondary characters: How to write a big cast of characters. There are a LOT of supporting characters in this show – the residents of Geumga Plaza, the legal firm and other villains Vincenzo and his allies go up against, as well as a plethora of minor bad guys. Look at how each of these characters is introduced, and how they are differentiated from each other, so that each supporting character is uniquely identifiable.

Emotional pacing: The intensely emotional dramatic scenes are balanced out by comedy. Pay attention to how the intensity is built up, then broken by switching to comedic scenes, giving the viewer a moment to catch their breath before the intensity rises again. Also, look at the balance between action-packed scenes and quieter, more emotional ones. Every suspense story needs its quiet moments too!

Antagonists: There are a lot of villains in this story! What I love about this show is that Vincenzo goes up a succession of bad guys, each worse than the one before. This creates that sense of rising tension and increasing stakes throughout the story. But these villains aren’t flat, cardboard cut-out bad guys. They have motivations for why they do what they do, whether it’s greed, corruption, protecting their loved ones, or because of their own values and ideals. This makes them morally complex, and therefore much more interesting to viewers. They’re also not static – some of the bad guys eventually become allies and even loyal friends, while others start as allies and then only later reveal their true intentions.

The villains of Babel Corporation

The ending: The story resolution delivers. I don’t usually enjoy violence or gore, but by the final episode I craved seeing justice done, and the ending did not disappoint. Unlike in some K-dramas where the antagonists (usually evil, manipulative parents!) get away with just a slap on the wrist, the villains in Vincenzo really do get their just desserts, and the world is righted again. The violence in the final episodes felt entirely justified – after 20 episodes of increasing villainy, any less would not have given viewers the emotional release they needed.

Perhaps my only quibble with this show is that the ultimate bad guy is a bit of a stereotype, largely because his motivation is never fully developed. We learn that he’s a psychopath who was simply born this way, which felt (at least to me) a little simplistic. But he was the perfect ultimate big bad guy (BBG) because his complete lack of morals created a contrast to Vincenzo, and made him a truly worthy antagonist for a hero as morally grey as Vincenzo.

I also liked that, while the BBG’s presence was hinted at early in the show (and he even appears as a minor character in the opening episodes) viewers don’t discover his true identity until many episodes later. When a writer holds back rather than revealing all their cards at the start, it enables them to create intrigue and reveal twists later in the story. No matter what genre you write, consider what information you can hold back to reveal later which will keep readers engaged and make your story as binge-worthy as Vincenzo is.

Ok Taec-yeon as the psychopathic CEO of Babel Corporation

A couple of interesting pieces of trivia:

• The psychopathic BBG is brilliantly played by rapper and idol Ok Taec-yeon, a member of the South Korean boy band 2PM. The role was challenging - effectively a dual role with two very different personalities - and he handled both incredibly well.
• Unexpectedly for such an action and SFX-driven story, the director, Kim Hee-won, is a woman. She also directed the 2025 Disney+ political thriller Tempest, and co-directed Warm and Cozy, Queen of Tears, and the iconic Crash Landing on You.

Have you watched Vincenzo? What were your thoughts? Do you have any standout moments that you remember long after the show's final episode?

You just know a show is going to deliver action and drama when it opens with a scene as iconic as this one: