Busan 2023: in Disney+ K-drama Vigilante, Nam Joo-hyuk doles out his own brand of justice in pulpy and engrossing revenge saga
- Nam Joo-hyuk stars as Kim Ji-yong, a top police recruit who tracks down his mother’s killer and beats him to a pulp, then goes on a vigilante spree
- In its aggressive and darkly vicarious way, Vigilante speaks to South Korea’s discontent with its inequitable legal system
Lead cast: Nam Joo-hyuk, Lee Joon-hyuk, Yoo Ji-tae, Kim So-jin
The series is set to launch on the streamer on November 8 and has just premiered three of its eight episodes at the Busan International Film Festival.
While Bruce Wayne has his vast wealth and Peter Parker has super powers to rely on, Nam’s poorer protagonist Kim Ji-yong makes use of the investigative materials available to him as a top recruit at the Korean National Police University.
Just like his American comic-book antecedents, Ji-yong lost a family member, his mother, who was killed during a vicious attack by a small-time thug.
What separates Ji-yong from the more rigid moral codes of those characters is that once grown up and strong enough to do so, he tracks down his mother’s killer and beats him to a squelching pulp with a savage glint in his eye.
Ji-yong’s rage increases with each successive act of vigilantism he engages in. Under his black hood and the cover of night he stalks a series of heinous criminals on whom he feels that justice was not served.
During a series of very popular broadcasts, she dubs him the “Vigilante” and in the same breath criticises the insufficient laws in their society that have created him.
The case grows more complicated when a copycat vigilante wearing a mask starts going after criminals, women and children included, and pronouncing his brand of vigilante justice through online videos.
Ji-yong balks at this new vigilante’s looser moral code, but he is also excited by the discovery of a kindred spirit, who is close to him in more ways than one.
Local news is filled with accounts of terrible crimes that shock the nation, but even more appalling are the light sentences routinely handed out to murderers and rapists.
In its aggressive and darkly vicarious way, Vigilante speaks to the nation’s discontent with its inequitable legal system.
The questions posed by this new series are pertinent and forceful, but this philosophising about the role of justice and laws in society never gets in the way of the show’s primary aim, which is to entertain.
The story invites us to side with its handsome vigilante yet its characterisations and scenarios are cartoonish enough to avoid anyone making the mistake of reading the narrative as a call to arms. Vigilante is punch-drunk escapism, not a manifesto.
Nam has the presence and physicality to pull off the vengeful side of Ji-yong, aided by lots of crunchy knuckle-dusting sound design. The role also makes full use of his puppy-dog attributes. It’s hard not to root for him yet when he gets sucked into the thrill of his own violence, an unsettling light begins to spark in his eyes.
Yoo and particularly Kim are acutely aware of the kind of show they find themselves in as they both lean into the contours of their comic book caricatures.
Behind the camera, Cho Jeong-yeol, director of Start-Up, keeps the action crisp, helping this diverting revenge tale move along at a brisk clip.
Vigilante will start streaming on Disney+ on November 8.
