Vincenzo (2021)

Just...what?

I know this show was super popular and let be start with the good stuff:

Amazing acting. Seriously...all the actors/actresses are great in their roles and some are playing very different characters than we have seen them in before so that is impressive all on it's own.

The Look - This show looks amazing and was filmed really well.

The not so good stuff:

Story - Interesting at first, but then got super violent and hard to take at times. Started out great, but got really over the top and cheezy a lot of the time. Also it was very hard to watch the villians be so awful. I mean, I know you are supposed to dislike them, but it's really just too much and instead of wanting justice for their crimes, I just didn't care about seeing them at all. And the violence...it's way way too much. Especially in the last episode. That was just a horror show that did not need to be seen. It was awful.

Characters - Disliked literally every character. Even though they were well acted, it was hard to root for the "good guys/gals" and even the side characters were just too over the top most of the time. My friend and I watched this show together and we decided the only "good" character is the pigeon. So there is that. I mean it's hard to cheer for even the "heroes" when they are willing to murder and be awful humans as well. Some of the characters started out likable, but by the end, I was ready to be done with all of them...except the pigeon. Him we could see more of. :-)

So, I can't recommend this drama. It's just extremely violent and hard to take.

Leia Mais

Slap stick and lame story line

The acting of the ML and FL are just so lame and bad acting. The skinny ML tries to act macho and intelligent which is not convincing at all. Tried to be asian James Bond, but not convicincing at all. The FL is just a annoying character and wish she should be killed right from the start. Cant imagine they are coming back with season 2...what a total waste of people's time .

The whole drama is a total flop and messy. Dont understand why people like this kind of bloody and no story line drama. Highly over rated and it is not appropriate to get such rating....I seriously cant understand why people like this drama.

A mafia guy who killed lots of people and could never face problems, like some super man. We are trying to make such a rotten character a hero? Every episode that I watched, I totally felt so pissed and wasted my time. I continued watching is to assess what is the big deal about this drama. There is total no story line...lame and silly !!!

Leia Mais

“Annoying Slapstick”

Some described this series as a “dark comedy” but I beg to disagree. By proper definition, a dark comedy is one that makes light of a subject matter that is generally considered taboo or painful to discuss. There was nothing of that sort in this painful to watch drama that was full of annoying slapstick and exaggerated actions specially by the female lead who was supposed to portray a respectable and dignified lawyer. The rest of the cast members were as clumsy and absurd which made it all the more irritating. As for the main man - Song Joong Ki as crime boss adviser Vincenzo - his youthful, good boy appearance was not the sensible representation of someone belonging to the fearsome Mafia hierarchy. Nothing seemed to make sense. A ridiculous waste of $18M budget as well as a regretful waste of 20 hours of my time.

Leia Mais

PAINFUL

I am a native Italian. I lived in Milan for 18 years. My family happened to be involved in politics and law. One of my aunts, a judge, was a NON-CORRUPTED member that fought and almost got killed because of her involvement in Berlusconi's trial. I do not know who you are or where you are from, but I travel extensively and I know EACH COUNTRY have crime organizations with local names. My country organizational crime is called MAFIA. Now, my blood almost exploded out of my veins when I saw baby face Song Joong Ki acting as mafia lawyer .My biggest fear became reality when girls and young women are raving about Mafia guys with pride and honor. NO SUCH THING. From The Godfather, to the Soprano , ending with Korea....enough is enough. Korea has MASSIVE crime in the form of loan sharks, due to the extreme nepotism and corrupt government. So I watched all these show and though we were very similar. ONE BIG DIFFERENCE: mafia is a PRODOTTO ITALIANO, made in Italy, so don't export slavery, pedophiles, drug dealers and pimps. Korea is producing such high quality shoes: Flower of evil, my mister, Hyena.....Awaken...I mean, I think you can use Mafia only to make fun of it, or to fight it. Not as a show. Grazie.

Leia Mais

Great cinematography....  but fell short of everything else

From the show page, I've  checked that Vincenzo currently has 159 user reviews and mine would be a review number 160. Why would I want to add another one on top of many ? Because I am hardworking like that and I like to spend my free time doing useless thingy like this. Also I have made a vow to do 1 review per year ,this might be it. So this is an unpopular opinion. My review will be brief and  in point form..

1) Cinematography and visual : Considering this was a high budget show *like TKEM* great visual is a must have . The show never disappoint in that department in fact Vincenzo excel with flying colours.

2) OST : I only like one song which is Adrenaline (Italian version) by Aalia which I wish we could hear it more in later episodes.

3) Acting of other than the main villain : The actors did the best with the materials they were given. Song Joong Ki looked dashing as usual ( like him in Innocent Man) Haa! Jeon Yeo Bin caught my eyes in this. She was stunning and I liked the point of her look, her lipstick. First time seeing her acting here and she was good.

4) Acting of the main villain : The reason I separated this with the others because I want to emphasize my view. I have issues with his acting. It was over the top like they want to make his character a caricature especially in the first 8 episodes. It was cringey like a cheesy pickup line and I hate this type of character :((( I could not take him seriously even when he did serious matter. Thanks god, this caricature acting was toned down in later episodes.

5) Storyline :  Nothing spectacular. Been there done that in countless drama I have seen.But I liked the idea behind the story. '' Solo il male può sconfiggere il male ''. Only evil can defeat evil. It was refreshing to see the evil got their commensurate punishments as it should be. While I low key think the punishment were a bit too much although the villains kinda deserved it ----< this is the angel in me writing.

6) Humor : I was indifferent to it. I found it to be lame and pretentious. Most of the time , it gave me a second-hand embarassment.

7) Just a thing worth to mention. I never know that I could get tired of the word mafia (read in korean slang) until I watch this show. It was like hearing Love is the moment song all over again.Could everyone please just stop.........

That's all. Thank you for reading.

Leia Mais

watching this because of Song Joong Ki.

Why I even bother with this drama. Song Joong Ki Rise to fame again and back on the map In Hallyu Status thanks to this drama And I'm as a fan feels gratefull to this drama. . I expecting it since the writers is really good generated buzz in his 2 previous drama and Plus It's Song Joong Ki. Though I admit, I didn't expected to generated this much buzz to the point it's one of the most watched on netflix. But because of this, It might be Along wait again until he reach 40 when he pick something more substance. Gosh the struggle being a fan of him is real.

The humor is enjoyable for me. And fit with my tastes. But there is no depth when the lightheart comedy take the center of the plot. And i really confuse in the middle of this drama what it's all about? At first I think this drama is all about a gold and it's connect to the WUsang and Babel group and waiting for the climax to happen. But It's not after all??? And then I though this drama is all about revenge to Babel group, but they switch the topic again, and its about the gold, and then next, it's about Babel Group again. Like They freakin confuse, let alone me. It's so disjointed

The main character has a hint to their past so we can connect to their struggle, past story, but it's nothing, it's just a tease. They seems like invisible character which we can hardly grasp and understand, always one step ahead despite they think they are always at disavantaged, but because they have vincenzo, they almost always win or either lucky.

Funnily, the writers seems write the villain more human and like they are main character by showing their struggle, and dynamics against vincenzo. I end up rooting for them to win. But they are supposed has to take down by our anti hero after all. So who is the main villain here?

Leia Mais

This is so disappointing

I am a fan of Song Joong Ki and had really high hopes for this. The only thing that made me suspicious was the Comedy tag and Crime tag combined. I have seen amazing Italian Tv shows about the mafia and they are never funny because there isn't anything funny about it. Anyways I decided to give a chance to this. The start was promising. Song was playing his part very well and showed good Italian speaking ( even though he was speaking slowly to focus on pronunciation) I really liked how he handled the foreign language. Could not expect anything less from him :) Now let's focus on the part he went back to Korea and bammm the crime and dark scenario is ruined by some morons in a building and annoying FL. What was this all about? Grown-up people act as primary school students and that FL...no words to describe how I seriously hoped the scenario will get better and see something worthy ( apart from the amazing Song Joong Ki) in this drama. Unfortunately, it is that bad and I don't see any hope for this. I Dropped the drama and let's hope Song will act in a better project next time!

Ok here I am again with a second review for the drama- while I dropped the drama at ep 4 I decided to come back and watch another 3 episodes and since I noticed something positive in the drama i have to point it out to be fair in my judgment. First of all, I am going to start with the negative:
-- This drama is really bad. The court scenes are preposterous and not realistic at all
-- The FL again - horrible as ever
-- The plot is very predictable so far
Now the positive:
-- SOng Ki is great in his role but the one that shines more than him is the villain. I have not seen this actor before but he is great at portraying such psychopaths. His role is more difficult than the one of Vincenzo and he is truly giving us a great performance. I decided to watch the drama to the end ( mainly his scenes) because he is so good and his character is also very interesting. So far ep 7 was the most interesting and I hope they give more screen time to the villain. There is so much we don't know about him. Somehow i have a strange feeling that he has some kind of fondness for the FL. What are your thoughts about it?

PS: I forgot to mention that the villain has very good English pronunciation. Love his English phrases :P

Edit: I stay behind my words but I have to mention that since I watched the whole drama after all ( apart from the major problems of the Mafia representation) I have to give some positive feedback about the final 2 episodes because I think they were simply the best. I have to post the quote from the magnificent ending ( and yes, I did like the final episode and how was executed) and I definitely liked Vincenzo final words in the drama:
“Two days ago, I used three Luciano family members as manure for the vineyard and took over the olive plantations in Malta. I’m still a villain and couldn’t care less about justice. Justice is weak and empty. One cannot win against any villains with justice alone. If merciless justice exists, I am willing to yield to it. Even villains long to live in a peaceful world. However, since that’s impossible, I’ve taken up a new hobby. Getting rid of garbage. If I don’t do that, people will die buried underneath the garbage.

There’s one last thing I’d like to say from a villain’s perspective. Evil is prevalent and vehement”.

Leia Mais

it could have been so much more than the convoluted mess we got

this drama could have been so good if everything was like the first 15 minutes. The tone and atmopshere is very uneven, jumping to somewhat dark to lame slapstick comedy (that feels a tad too juvenile at times). Here's the thing, I don't give af about the tenants of the building, and their over the top acting pisses me off lmao just throw them all away. Everyone is raving about the chemistry, but the characters aren't developed enough for the relationship to really feel meaningful. I mean I still got to episode 15 and will still keep watching for those little bits of potential I can see that are hidden under layers of unnecessary comedic filler. I think the ml carried this lmao, he was impeccable and I would have been fine if he just yeeted out of Korea and spent the whole drama in Italy cuz that's where shit goes down. Also did I mention he was hot? Because that's also a huge reason I keep watching. I guess a dark noir mafia drama was too much to ask for huh. Basically, like dude should kick ass but he doesn't which pisses me off

OMG EP 16 ROCKED. DUDE this is the scene I have been waiting for dude. OMLOMLLMOMLL. Serious Kaz Brekker vibes and I'm loving it. Okay, the ending was lit and dark, As the show went on, I think I begrudging accepted that this juvenile exaggerated comedy is here to stay (unfortunately), doesn't mean I have to like it though! I remained disinterested in the tenants' storyline to the end. I would have liked to see Vincenzo been challenged more, because he basically never is, and plus that cliche move of making Hong Chayeong a damsel in distress was just not the move bro.

I'm very grateful they didn't shy away from vincenzo's moral greyness though, and didn't try to reform him, so there's that. Also, most people liked Hanseo, I personally find him a bit one-dimensional. Or mb I just don't dig his character lol, Idk anymore. Honestly I feel like there was weak characterization all around, and I didn't feel the chemistry between Vincenzo and Chayeong at all, especially near the end. Ughhh, there's this weird exaggerated tone that the drama has that just throws the whole thing off, which makes the drama feel very cartoony (sitcom-esque), and undermines the somber tone and themes they are trying to establish. It really doesn't mesh well.

I think I can sum this whole drama to two words: wasted potential. Like Peaky blinders was fab can we have more of that in kdramas? Basically, this drama is trying to be two things: a lame ass comedy and an edgy mafia thriller, and fails miserably at both. I mean, I did tune in for this drama each week, so I guess that's sometthing (they are really good with cliffhangers lol, like the whole episode will be filler and in the last 5 mins, something interesting happens and you're like oh shit i need to pay attention now). This is the first k drama I've watched as it aired, and I must say, it's great cuz I haven't lost any sleep over this, on the bright side.

Leia Mais

overrated ? i dont think so- not for everyone

I tend to get bored easily with long series, but I stayed in suspense throughout all 20 episodes.
One of the excellent things about the series is that the plot only develops and improves from episode to episode and keeps the interest of the viewer.
Another special and amazing thing about this drama is the exact combination of action, sophistication, and humor.
The series has such funny parts, exactly at the right time and in the right dose.
Highly recommend the series!! She is officially one of my favorites, and I will watch her over and over again.
such a refreshing role to the ML not typical like most dramas.
the cast was amazing the chemistry between the main lead was great, even without a full of romance scene.

Leia Mais

Fun but overlong

I'll make the review short..
The majority of what is wrong with this show stems from the fact that that the show is too long for its own good. Each episode is almost 70 - 90 minutes in runtime. It being a netflix show, i dont know why they had to stretch each episode to reach this runtime. The series would have been much better if the episode count was reduced to 16 or the by reducing the episode length.
To fill the runtime there are many unnecessary jokes and setups for comedy which works sometimes but not nearly enough. Whatever emotional aspects or urgency the story tries to bring fizzles out in the end due to this..
I was on board with the romance aspect of the story, i think the charm of the characters and actors worked well and the chemistry was really good. The over the top nature of the story never bothered me (When was Korean Dramas not over the top😅).
Story was not perfect dont get me wrong but still i was not bored by it but at the same time i wont be rewatching it any time soon...

Leia Mais

Vincenzo

I'm not sure what all the hype was about in this drama. It has high review and was recommended to me from a friend. Still, I don't find it as great as others. Some parts are very exciting and fast pace while other scenes are dragging and shouldn't even be included. I found myself rolling my eyes and groaning in disappointment in certain scenes.

No doubt Vincenzo Cassano is a tough mafia who will get the job done. However, there are many scenes where he's not like a mafia. He's like a clumsy, funny typical rom-com Korean protagonist. He could have been funny and normal without the extreme jumping and falling down, or extreme surprise stupefied facial expression at certain episodes. There are many 'wtf' moments, ie, when a whole flocks of birds came to rescue him. I actually screamed and laughed out loud in disbelief.
And it's not a good laugh either. There are many, many over the top acting from all characters. Many many OOC taking place in the drama. I understand some of the those were for comical relief but it's not working for me. They're too over the top.

I don't like the force romance between the two main leads. They both have a great friendship and working relationship. But I don't see a romance relationship between them. Whenever it appears, it seems force and out of place to me. I also don't find the people in the Geumga Plaza pleasant to watch. It's such a "coincidence" that they all have some kind of fighting background. It's so weird that they all come together and help one another like that without worrying about the consequence. And non of them fear the mafia, Vincenzo, a man who could torture and kill without blinking an eye. The Geumga Plaza residents are silly and I guess they provide a comical aspect to the show.

I still did find this drama watchable. I cried when a few of the characters died. I like and feel sorry for Jang Han-seo. He started out silly and stupid but end up being someone who showed growth and able to redeem himself at the end.

I like the revenge plot. I like the an eye for an eye approach. If you did Vincenzo wrong, he would take revenge and make sure you feel every single pain for it. The cat and mouse game he plays with Jan-Han-seok and Cha-Young was a joy to watch. Overall, it was an okay drama but I would not watch it ago.

Leia Mais

Overhyped at best

This is a comedy murder series where the protagonist is unkillable and "imbalanced".
They try hard to make the drama be series while it being a comedy, doesn't really work. Both genre's clashing just makes the whole vibe like it's a joke. The main leads have little chemistry, so thankfully there aren't many romance scenes. Only 1 side character was likeable for me. The plot of the whole series is pretty much of a conglomerate company bribing, and murdering people and getting away with it like it's nothing lmao. If you only watch dramas bc of the handsomeness of actors, this is the one for you; else, overrated.

Leia Mais