Black Knight (Netflix miniseries, review)
Black Knight is Netflix original miniseries just released for streaming. It is a dystopian sci-fi show set up in the postapocalyptic (South?) Korea in 2071. In short, it’s a sort of mixture between Mad Max and Elysium.
In the future most of the humanity died because of the comet impact which left the atmosphere of Earth too polluted to survive. Only 1% of the inhabitants of Korea survived, and they live in the strictly controlled city, where the population is divided into various classes with different privileges. Outside the city live the refugees, people with no rights and access to resources. All resources in the city are controlled by the single (obviously evil) corporation, Cheonmyeong Group. That corporation was responsible for mass murder of refugees both in the past and present.
The main lead of the show is ‘5–8’ (in that role the main star of the show, Kim Woo-bin, most recently known from Our Blues). He is the so-called deliveryman, a driver who delivers packages with food and oxygen on behalf of Cheonmyeong to people who order them. Unbeknownst to Cheonmyeong execs, delivery drivers lead by 5–8 are organized in a secret organization which helps refugees and fights with Cheonmyeong.
The main story arc of the show revolves around Yoon Sa-wol (Kang Yoo-seok) who is a refugee boy dreaming about becoming deliveryman as 5–8. In the course of the show, he becomes entangled in the fight between deliverymen and Cheonmyeong.
The female lead of the show is Jeong Seol-ah (in that role Esom, known from the first season of Taxi Driver). She is a military intelligence officer loyal to the government of Korea (which does not always see eye to eye with Cheonmyeong). Seol-ah and Sa-wol have a common history: Sa-wol was adopted by Seol-ah and was living with her and her sister Jung Seul-Ah (in that role the recent Baeksang winner, Our Blues and Crash Course in Romance alum, Roh Yoon-seo).
The main villain of the show is Ryu Seok (Song Seung-heon), a vice chairman of Cheonmyeong group. He is a typical K-Drama chaebol executive, bent on acquiring more power at the cost of innocent people, so unfortunately, not particularly original, or even interesting villain.
The show has an amazing cast, though: Another Taxi Driver star, Kim Eui-sung, plays mysterious “Grandpa,” an ally of deliverymen and sort of Merlin to Sa-wol’s Arthur. There is a cameo of yet another Taxi Driver alum Bae Yoo-ram as a troubled deliveryman 5–7. Another deliveryman, 3–3, is played by Lee Soon-won known from Duty After School and Island. Jin Kyung plays a president of the Korean government (recently starring in Extraordinary Attorney Woo and Love in Contract). And the rising actress Lee E-Dam (recently in Artificial City) is 4–1, a right-hand deliverywoman to 5–8 with phenomenal fighting skills. It seems then that Netflix did not spare expenses on that show.
Besides production value, which is top-notch as for Korean shows, the series has unfortunately little to offer. The main storyline is essentially a retelling of Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s journey, with Sa-wol acting as a hero: I won’t spoil it too much, but that’s why the plot is very close to Star Wars: A New Hope but in a postapocalyptic setting. The world building is also very simplistic: we have to suspend our disbelief to accept the world as it is shown to us. The Mad Max franchise still remains the golden standard in the postapocalyptic genre, and Black Knight doesn’t even attempt to match this. The show also has some pacing problems: it starts quite slowly, picking up the speed in the third episode or so: it seems the entire plot could have been told in a 2-hour movie, and this perhaps would be a better idea than 6-episode miniseries.
In the end, Black Knight is a rather entertaining miniseries, continuing Netflix’ strong interest in Korean content. They definitely did not spare expenses for the production and cast; the concept could have been more original and better executed though. In the end, we get a very stereotypical action sci-fi series with a very predictable plot.
Black Knight on Wikipedia and MyDramaList
