Vincenzo and the dilemma of evil vs more evil: A year on, looking back at Song Joong-ki’s darkest performance till date

A still from Vincenzo (Photo: Netflix)

It’s one of those shows where you take a week to re-watch certain scenes and desperately try to spot things that were missed the first time, so you can relish the plot twists later. For a person like me who gets impatient with more than 16 episodes in a show, it became an enormously difficult task to attempt not binge-watching the show after Episode 5, because the show just kept getting better and was relentless with the surprises. Vincenzo induces curious feelings — you watch it to laugh and the comedy seems comforting, and at the same time, you’re invested in this Korean Godfather, who can take down an entire empire of corrupt thugs, but runs screaming from a pigeon-infested room.

Vincenzo, played by Song Joong-ki, revolved around a Korean-Italian crime lord, who returns from Italy to South Korea in the hope of retrieving gold buried in a residential plaza. Unfortunately, he gets entangled in the lives of the plaza residents—all so brilliantly cuckoo in their own way that they deserve their own shows–and sets out to free them from the iron-grip of a menacing corporation called Babel and deceitful lawyers. He is assisted by a delightful Cha-young, played by Jeon Yeon-Been—who is just so outrageously crazy that she fits right into the mix. She is out for revenge too, as her father is killed by Babel honchos—and for the first ten episodes, they set out to unearth the mystery of the Babel CEO, who as it turns out, has been right under their noses all this while.

Meet Ok Taecyeon’s murderous Jang Han-seok, who almost has you deceived as he plays the dual role of a hapless intern in front of Cha-young, when in reality, he’s actually the ghoulish CEO of Babel. He’s hilarious too—but you’re almost too scared to laugh sometimes, during the first watch at least. In probably one of the most demonic yet comic scenes of the show, he reveals himself as CEO through a twisted PowerPoint presentation, and encourages his lawyers to laugh and cheer him on. Of course, a failure to deliver can result in a brutal death as the lawyers quickly realise. Kim Yeo-jin plays the absolutely detestable Cho Myung-hee, a Zumba enthusiast, who is so devious and horrible in her schemes that you almost can’t wait for Vincenzo to put her case to rest. Oh, and he does—in the most grimly satisfying way possible—using her own love for Zumba. It’s a horrific scene, and you almost feel guilty for the bloodlust rising up in you like bile.

The body count keeps increasing, but the Babel team makes a fatal mistake when trying to pull down Vincenzo, and it involves his frail and dying mother. There’re no two sides for the mafia lord after that, they’re as good as dead to him. In the best scene of his career — a murderous, cold Vincenzo walks eerily in the woods after a murderous thug ensures that he leads him to the Babel criminals. Till now, Vincenzo hadn’t been bothered with killing the antagonists, but this time, they crossed the line. He channels all the darkness in him, and you almost begin to fear for the criminals.

The OST—titled Un Diavolo scaccia ‘altro by Lee Nyeom—-is pounding, filled with tension, and fits so perfectly for Song Joong-ki’s Vincenzo, that I almost want to send out petitions requesting that Joong-ki should make his appearance at every award show with this blaring in the background. It doesn’t even seem excessive; you just know that when that OST plays — some damage is going to be done. Bring it on.

With deadly calm, he walks into the room of murderers, quietly announces that there was a reason he hadn’t wasted time killing them before but there’s no escape. It won’t be an easy death, he promises.

With such brazen vigilantism and violence, it would be unfair to say that Vincenzo doesn’t raise questions of morals and ethics—are you really supposed to root for him? Yet, he doesn’t want you to, either. He knows that his methods are ghoulish. However, owing to Song Joong-ki’s nuanced portrayal of the mafia consigliore, it’s increasingly hard not to. At the heart of it, the character who calls himself ‘scum’ who ‘cleans up other scum’  is a cold-hearted killer. The show pits two ideas of ‘evil’ against each other. No one is on the right side of the law here. Who do you choose?

Vincenzo murders other killers, because he knows that the law is too corrupt and decrepit to do anything, but it’s also the genius of the creators they brought out such a character who fights for the innocent, and the poor as well. He is the dark horse on the side of the good, but he won’t follow their path of virtues. He has his own rules. Smooth like butter, he escapes detection and captures every single time—which is a little hard to believe, but sure, we’ll buy it.

Song Joong-ki made the best decision of his career with Vincenzo. Also, please make the man speak more Italian. It’s just perfect.