This seems to be very popular as far as Korean TV shows are concerned and is definitely a recurring theme. I like the idea behind it because so many of my favorite Korean movies follow the same general plot-line but just like with anything, some attempts at following this well-trodden path are better than others. While My Name is reasonably entertaining it is a bit too unlikely a scenario to actually be true. Plus it does have a questionable overall theme in that it glorifies organized crime to a rather high level - not that I really have a problem with that because give me mafia over government any day.
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I'm not going to go into great detail about the character's names and trust me when I mean no offense about this, but Korean names are difficult for me to remember and this is why it is quite important to me that when watching a Korean film or series that there not be too many characters simply because I am not going to remember a bunch of Korean names. That's just me not being Korean I'm afraid :)
The main character is high-school teenager Yoon Ji-woo, who is the estranged daughter of a mafia boss of sorts. Her father is in hiding because of various mafia reasons and she doesn't have a great relationship with him for reasons that they don't really tell us about - it isn't very important to the story that we have this information.
One day on her birthday her father calls her, she is mean to him on the phone, and he ends up turning up at her apartment (do Korean children often get to live away from their parents without some sort of adult guardian?) and while he is knocking on her door to wish her happy birthday he is assassinated in the hallway.
Yoon Ji-woo, despite her teenage angst feelings towards her father, feels immense grief over this and feels, somewhat rightfully so, that it is her fault that he is now dead. Thus begins a long and drawn out series of events that leads on an unlikely path to getting revenge on her father's killer or killers... It's presumably more than one person or this would be a very short series.
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Despite the fact that she apparently never had anything to do with her father's dark side, Yoon Ji-woo reaches out to the current mob boss for assistance only to discover that he won't simply get the revenge for her, but instead takes her under his wing in order to train her to be a useful member of the mob. She must go through the ranks just like any soldier would have to and this is where the show becomes a bit ridiculous given her size.
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She gets thrown into the ranks of the regular soldiers in the boxing training camp or something and has to fight her way out just like anyone else would have to. Of course she accomplishes this in record-breaking speed despite the fact that she maybe weighs 120lbs if she was wearing a backpack filled with bricks.
Later she ends up doing something even more absurd in that she is accepted to join the police force and is now a mafia operative that is working inside the judicial system. This reeks of The Departed but for all we know those guys stole this idea from Korea. It's a decent angle that while at first seems crazy because no police department is going to promote and hire someone who is the daughter of a well-known mafia boss into their ranks and not expect some sort of conflict of interest.
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The fun doesn't stop there though because not only does she rise quickly in the ranks of the mafia, bypassing through brute force boxers and street-fighters who weight twice as much as she does, but she has the same sense of doing no wrong in her police duties as well.
It's fine, but at times it just seems entirely too unrealistic that this combination of tiny girl with obvious mafia ties would ever be put into these positions. At least Matt Damon and Leo DiCaprio had massive cover stories for their characters and she, well she just doesn't have that. The only thing they did with her was change her name to Oh Hye-jin but come on! The police are going to do a background check.
Should I watch it?
I think I have done a good job of displaying my rather nonplussed attitude about the rather convenient things that happen in this series and while I don't mind a tiny good-looking hero, I do get a bit annoyed when someone the size of a child rather easily overpowers several 200 lb guys in a fist-fight, and this happens frequently. If you can look past all of that there is a decent story here although it does seem rather pre-determined how it is all going to happen. One of the things I tend to enjoy about Korean shows and movies is that it isn't so easy to see exactly where the story is going - we don't really get that with this.
That being said it is still worth watching, if you can deal with reading the subtitles because once again and as always, the overdubbing is absolutely terrible - laughably bad actually!
I love this. I am almost inclined to see it. I know my sister would love it too. She's a Korean drama freak and she most certainly will love a Mafia storyline too.
So, we will by-pass all the non-so-good observations of yours and give ourselves a treat to this movie.
Love the review 🔥🔥🔥
well different people will have different opinions about things like this. The only reason why I gave this a "maybe" instead of a full on thumbs up is because there are so many Korean series that are just like this but with minor differences. If you haven't seen a bunch of those already, this might be exactly what you and your sister might like it a lot!