I watched this finally since it received raves and awards for the leads and the drama from the MBC network....so it must have been a bad year for MBC if this was the mega winner. It does feature a different angle as to how the ML gets entangled in a power struggle but otherwise it is a standard overly dramatic Korean gangster/power abuse melodrama featuring lots of gang fighting and over the top cruelty against the powerless.. but the revenge against the abusers is not very effective or clever.
If you like the leads, he is as goodlooking as ever even when beaten up and when he weeps, and she is admirable but it was more pleasant to see her in King the Land.
Personally I thought that the ML as well as FL in The Forbidden Marriage that was in the 2022 line up with this show showed a far greater range of emotions and character depth in a well executed story in less than the standard 16 episodes in which this drama was drawn out to fill the space.