“My Name” (마이 네임)

By Jae-Ha Kim
Substack
October 25, 2021

☆☆☆☆

Yoon Ji-Woo / Oh Hye-Jin (played by Han So-Hee)
Choi Mu-Jin (played by Park Hee-Soon)
Jeon Pil-Do (played by Ahn Bo-Hyun)
↑Note: Korean names denote the surname followed by the given name.

You know how in most action series, there is that one guy who can fight a team of gangsters, get stabbed and bounce back into action in no time? In the revenge thriller “My Name,” that guy is a kickass woman.

Han So-Hee plays a teenager, whose gangster father was stabbed to death outside their apartment. From that moment on, her raison d’être is to find his murderer and kill him. When the police basically tell her to get lost, she joins forces with Choi Mu-Jin (Park Hee-Soon) — the super hot leader of Korea’s largest drug cartel, who was also her dad’s boss. They were like brothers, he tells her. And he promises to  help her get justice.

I’m sorry, did I say super hot? Well, I meant it. He’s the type of guy who slaps a teenage girl, whose father has just been murdered — and this is obviously all kinds of wrong.  But … he is one cool cucumber, who looks fantastic in suits. Park is such a charismatic actor that viewers will root for him, even though the character he is playing is loathsome.

Eventually, he takes her under his wings and lets her train with his brutal gang, who tolerate her … until she beats one of them up. The thug retaliates by drugging and attempting to rape her. This sets in motion betrayal, more murder and subterfuge that culminates in Ji-Woo finding out what really happened to her father. Much of this occurs after she has infiltrated the police force as officer Oh Hye-Jin.

The bloody violence is beautifully shot, the music is gorgeous and Han’s intensity makes her a badass heroine viewers will support — even when we know that her need for revenge is clouding her better judgment. No matter how hard she tries to rationalize her actions, her version of justice won’t give her the peace of mind she’s looking for to move on with her life.

Airdates: Netflix released all eight episodes on October 15, 2021. Each episode ranged between 45- to 60-minutes long.

Spoiler Alert: Ji-Woo’s father was an undercover police officer embedded into the drug cartel. Early in the series, he tells his daughter that he’ll be gone for just a little while longer. He was getting close to getting all the information necessary to indict Mu-Jin. Ultimately, Mu-Jin figures out what’s going on and kills him and misleads Ji-Woo into thinking that it was a cop who killed her father.

Han So-Hee and Ahn Bo-Hyun share some nice moments together. Ahn plays Detective Jeon Pil-Do. Near the end of the series, Mu-Jin kills Pil-Do as Ji-Woo watches in shock. Mu-Jin has now taken away two of the men she loved the most.

The one element I didn’t buy about her relationship with Pil-Do was how quickly he believed her, when it was clear that Ji-Woo wasn’t who she said she was — and that her actions were dangerous to herself, him and the other detectives on their team.

© 2021 JAE-HA KIM | All Rights Reserved