Vincenzo (빈센조) : K-drama review [ 1 YEAR SPECIAL!]

1-year special💃🎉🎉🍾🎊🎊🥳🍻

It is rather fitting that my post celebrating one year since I started this blog is about Vincenzo, because it is a show that I truly love.

First of all, give Song Joong-ki his flowers, like right now! He absolutely bodied this role, all the other actors were also really good, but we cannot ignore Jong-ki’s amazing performance, there were so many jaw dropping moments and his acting was top tier, I don’t know how else to explain how much I loved him in this role, but I wish Vincenzo all the awards it can get ( praying joong-ki and the director get that baeksang). Fun fact, this is actually my first time watching him in a drama, I tried watching DOTS but couldn't due to certain circumstances, so it was nice to watch something with someone who is unfamiliar, because I tend to be more eager to watch shows when I see that they're actors I know.

If your thinking of watching Vincenzo, do it, do it now, in fact stop reading and go watch it, cause obviously there’s spoilers ahead.

This show is about a korean-italian mafia consigliere who travels to Korea to get some hidden gold, but instead gets into a battle with a corrupt company called babel.

Let's take a second to talk about how much I absolutely love Vincenzo.

I like the fact that although he’s the protagonist he gets his hands dirty, none of that let’s do it the moral way type of thing, it really eases the frustration when you see babel coming at them, because we know Vincenzo is going to come back with twice as much revenge. I also loved the whole lighter thing, sounded like ASMR, very much appreciated. Is he a protagonist or antagonist? I say neither, he’s in a category of his own. I felt the regret with him when his mum died, the fact that he was about to tell her he was her son was so heartbreaking. I still don't understand why Han-seok and Myung-hee would do that, knowing fully well that Vincenzo would come for them. That was the episode where we got to see the mafia in him take control, and I could not take my eyes of the screen, the ability Joong-ki had to be able to convey all those emotions was admirable. it made me feel like I was watching an Oscar winning drama.

I love watching shows with large casts, there’s so many people to love, I would’ve been so sad if Mr. Lee actually died, the director really got us. I also really loved Ahn Gi Seok, he was such a relief to watch after all the drama going on, I would instantly be happy whenever he came up in the screen, I would hope that if he was real, I would be let into the Vincenzo fan club.

I’ve talked about product placements before, and I have no problem with them as long as they are not too excessive, but this was weird, like for the first maybe 15 episodes there was absolutely no mention of kopiko, and then all of a sudden we see it for what feels like 2-3 times an episode, which I know sounds excessive, that’s how it felt. But now I wanna buy some kopiko, so I guess it worked.

I loved the fact that this show came with comedy, romance, thrill and the list goes on, but for the romance part...

I feel like we didn’t get enough of it, when I started watching it, I completely expected for Vincenzo and Cha young to get together maybe by episode 14, yes there were scenes, but it was never really there completely, so yeah I’m a little disappointed in that area, don’t get me wrong, I knew what kind of show I was getting into, but if your going to tease the romance, then do it properly or don’t tease it at all.

Oh the comedy! The episode with minseong and taeho was by far one of my favorites, props to the director for putting something like that in, I really wasn’t expecting it, and it was very well executed, I'm glad we got to see minseong in the last episode, it was a nice comedic relief, amidst all the things that were going on. Another fun fact, I watched ''space sweepers'' while waiting for episodes of Vincenzo to be released, and unfortunately, I could not get all the references till later on, but now I do! and they were really clever.

The deaths...

For some reason, I did not expect Vincenzo to actually kill myung -hee and han-seok, they did have it coming, but even though their deaths were painful and slow as Vincenzo promised, part of me still wishes they suffered.

Hanseo’s death was sad, he had such an amazing character development, and for him to just die? I know he did it bravely, but I was really starting to love him. I’m just glad that he found a brother in Vincenzo, because it would have been even worse if he died with hanseok as the only brother he knew. I’m really not for this whole trend of bad character becomes good and then dies thing. (*cough* *cough* tale of the nine tailed). I wish we at least got to see a funeral, it felt like his death was dismissed too easily, and that we were not given time to grieve.

Let’s talk about Jang hanseok...

I did not expect him to the villain when I watched the first few episodes, even though I already knew before I started (oops =), I kept on telling myself there was no way he would become bad. Calling him a villain is not sufficient enough, he was not human at all. It felt like as the episodes went by, he wasn’t as strategic, in the first few episodes, he had this back on forth with Vincenzo, but as we went further into the story, it felt like it was just Vincenzo winning, without any losses, I just found this unusual. Coming back to the him killing Vincenzo’s mum, it was just not smart, why provoke him if you have nothing to counterattack it?. Nevertheless, taecyon played the role superbly.

Hong Cha-yeong

She was such a good character, although looking back, I feel like we didn’t get to know her that well. The ways she walked always cracked me up, and looking at her, you would not expect her to have such a personality. I really liked her, and those outfits she had on throughout the season made me wish I worked in Jipuragi.

Rating : 9/10

DISCLAIMER: I do not cover everything in this reviews, a lot more goes on in the series.

Special note: I honestly did not think I would still have this blog a year ago. I'm inconsistent, and I procrastinate a lot, yet here we are. Right now, I'm basically writing these for myself, and basically nobody reads these, but I do plan on making a domain, so for future readers, hope you've enjoyed it so far.

Because it is such a special day, I cannot end it with one review. Penthouse S1 review coming up next.