Drama Review: 'Vagabond' (2019)
Korean Title: 배가본드
English Title: Vagabond
Network: SBS (Korea)
Global Distributor: Netflix (Global)
Episodes: 16
Broadcast Period: September 20 - November 23, 2019
Genre: Action, Espionage, Thriller
Language(s): Korean, English, Arabic
Cast: Lee Seung Gi (Hwayugi), Suzy (Start Up), Shin Sung Rok (My Love From the Star, Liar Game)
Directed by: Yoo In Sik (Dr. Romantic)
Written by: Jang Young Chul & Jung Kyung Soon (Empress Ki)
Summary
Vagabond (2019) is an action-espionage drama about an underrated stuntman and aspiring action film director, Cha Dal Geon (Lee Seung Gi), who finds himself fighting against the Korean government as he tries to unravel the real cause behind a plane crash that killed his nephew, Cha Hoon (Moon Woo Jin) during a school trip to Morocco.
Along the way, Cha Dal Geon crosses paths with National Intelligence Service (NIS) agents, Go Hae Ri (Suzy) and Gi Tae Woong (Shin Sung Rok) and they help Cha Dal Geon with his investigation using their abilities and connections.
Vagabond is Lee Seung Gi and Suzy’s second time teaming up for a drama since Gu Family Book (2013). Being the highest-budgeted Korean drama produced in 2019, it had an estimated budget of US $22 million and was pre-produced from start to finish - with a majority of its scenes filmed across multiple cities in Morocco and Portugal.
Both Lee Seung Gi and Suzy prepared intensely for their roles given the scale of its production. Vagabond has many action-packed stunts - a majority of them performed by Lee Seung Gi himself with very minimal support from stunt doubles. In addition, Suzy spent a couple of months learning Arabic for the role of Go Hae Ri and we can see her speaking it multiple times through the course of the drama.
Story & Writing
WARNING! MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD
The drama starts off by establishing the amount of passion and dedication Cha Dal Geon (Lee Seung Gi) has when it comes to realizing his dream of becoming a world-class action film director. We’re taken through a montage of scenes from his first projects, his struggles and his injuries as as a struggling stuntman.
In parallel, we also see how integrated his orphaned nephew, Cha Hoon (Moon Woo Jin) becomes in his life. Through the montage of scenes, we see the loving and supportive relationship Dal Geon and Hoon share as well as how Hoon grows from being a mindless toddler to a conscientious, young boy that was actually quite mature for his age.
As Hoon continues to grow, Dal Geon quickly learns that the pay he receives from his on-and-off contract work as a stuntman will be insufficient to support Hoon’s dreams, so he decides to drive a taxi for a living instead and part ways with his dream of becoming an action film director.
Aside from Dal Geon and Hoon’s story, we also learn that the Korean government is in talks of launching a large-scale military project called, ‘F-X Plan’ which involves producing powerful military aircraft designed to serve and protect the Korean people from external threats. There are two main manufacturers bidding for the government project - Dynamic Systems and John & Mark.
On the plane to Morocco, Hoon documents his overseas trip by taking a self-video using his phone as the rest of the passengers boarded and uploads the video to a cloud server. Through this sequence of scenes, we learn there is a mysterious man who later on hijacks the plane and subsequently sends the aircraft plunging into Moroccan seas, killing all passengers on board - including Hoon.
Dal Geon soon finds out through a breaking news report that the flight carrying the national taekwondo team Hoon was a part of has crashed with no survivors found. According to news reports, the crash was the result of a mechanical malfunction in the aircraft manufactured by Dynamic Systems and the next course of action would be to compensate the victims for the damages.
Following the plane crash, the only thing Dal Geon has left of Hoon’s is the cloud server which holds all of Hoon’s personal photos and videos that he shares with Dal Geon - and so, Dal Geon spends the forthcoming nights viewing all of the materials on Hoon’s server as a means of coping with his death.
Afterwards, we are introduced to Go Hae Ri (Suzy) who works at the Korean Embassy in Morocco and she arranges a trip for the bereaved family members to Morocco, so that they can pay their final respects to the victims who died in the plane crash.
At the Moroccan airport, Dal Geon bumps into a familiar face in the restroom. At first, Dal Geon struggles to remember where he’s seen this individual before - until it hits him that the person is actually one of the passengers captured in the video Hoon shot while boarding the plane.
Dal Geon recalls the report stating that there were no survivors found from the plane crash. So his instincts immediately send him chasing the mystery man from Hoon’s video - and this is where all the crazy stunts and action begin. Dal Geon instantly confronts him to ask how he survived the plane crash especially after the news reported all passengers died. It’s at this point that Dal Geon deduces the plane crash may not be a manufacturing issue but in fact, a terrorist attack.
After his encounter with Mystery Guy, Dal Geon goes to the Korean Embassy to share his theory with the rest of the bereaved family members, the head of Dynamic Systems, Edward Park (Lee Geun Young), Go Hae Ri and the Korean embassy staff. He asks them to help him catch the terrorist but they end up calling him insensitive and crazy - given the fact that everyone was literally mourning the loss of their loved ones.
SPOILERS END HERE
From here on until the last episode of the drama, Dal Geon spends his time trying to get people to believe his theories. Slowly, but surely, he is able to gather people’s trust and members of the NIS help him out to uncover the mastermind behind the terrorist attack. However, the more layers they peel off the case and the closer they get to the truth, the more enemies they end up with. Having said that, we spend a whole lot of time watching Dal Geon and Hae Ri bond together through dodging bullets and assassination attempts.
The Review
Where or how do I even begin this review?
The premise of this show had a lot of potential. Given the budget on this show: here are some of the things that piqued my interest to watch this show and we’re going to go through each one and evaluate how the show met or did not meet my expectations:
Stunt Work
Expectation: Lee Seung Gi does his own stunts and action scenes.
Reality: The stunt work ended up looking incredible and intensely gripping in the first half of the drama. Additionally, Lee Seung Gi did end up doing his own stunts and action scenes and he did a fantastic job with it.
Crisp and cohesive writing
Expectation: Well, the title for this one is pretty self-explanatory.
Reality: We’ll start with the good points: I like the theme surrounding how different people cope with the grief and sudden loss of a loved one. There were many quotes said by the bereaved family members that I personally identified with including the concept of “refusing to go back to your regular life because you’re scared you might forget [about the person you lost]”.
I also really appreciate the way they wrote Dal Geon’s role, coupled with Lee Seung Gi’s performance - I think they captured Dal Geon’s simple-minded-ness and straightforwardness pretty well. Dal Geon was vigilant in many ways (like knowing when danger will strike and how to protect himself from it) but careless in other ways (like how he handles and freely shares information upon instinct and without much thought of its impact to others).
Outside of the above - the rest of the writing takes a turn for the worse following the first half of the drama.
WARNING! SPOILERS AHEAD
Let’s take Go Hae Ri’s “gunshot injury” as a stark example: After the big court trial between John & Mark and Dynamic Systems in Episode 13, Hae Ri undergoes a “critical surgery” due to a ricocheted bullet grazing her side. Now, I have some questions regarding the details surrounding her injury, including but not limited to:
* Why did the ambulance make a pit stop in front of the big LED news screen? Why was it stuck in traffic - aren’t ambulances immune to traffic?
* How did the bullet reach her spine?
* Why was Dal Geon administering her physiotherapy? Last time I checked, he was a stunt man, not a physiotherapist.
* If it was a ricocheted bullet, how is it that the bullet they removed from her was a whole bullet and not a used bullet?
But essentially, the writers seemed to enjoy inserting filler scenes (in addition to many others) to force the love line between Dal Geon and Hae Ri’s characters - even when it made absolutely no sense to do so.
Oh, and that ending - turns out everything we watched during the last 16 episodes were nothing but a backstory. What did I invest all those calories for? Are they setting up the show for a second season with this tactic, perhaps? Possibly. But in any case, I often found myself digging my face into my pillow and kicking the air out of disappointment and second-hand embarrassment because of how they managed to ruin such a promising show.
SPOILERS END HERE
The Case with Suzy’s Acting
Expectation: Given this is her second project with Lee Seung Gi, I am assuming there is some level of comfort and chemistry between her and him. In addition, Go Hae Ri’s character is different from any of Suzy’s previous roles so maybe, just maybe, this is the genre for her.
Reality: I can’t tell if it’s Suzy’s acting, the terrible writing, or both - but I just didn’t find any complexity in her portrayal of Go Hae Ri. From a writing perspective, it did look like Go Hae Ri had many struggles and experiences to draw depth from which could’ve built her character up to someone we can have sympathy for and ultimately respect and admire. Instead, we end up seeing a Go Hae Ri who didn’t have much of a purpose in pursuing her goals, was always mediocre in everything she did no matter how hard she worked and no matter how many times she tried again.
On top of that, we know that one of Go Hae Ri’s driving forces for joining the NIS was due to her desire to be a “national hero” like her military father who died while saving eight people. Like we discussed in #2, there’s an underlying theme in the drama regarding the ways people cope with the loss of loved ones. I believe this point of background or experience of Go Hae Ri’s could’ve been a huge opportunity for Suzy to add an additional layer of complexity to her character, leveraging the overall theme of the drama but unfortunately, they missed the mark on that one too.
The Verdict
Overall Rating: 1/10
That’s 0.75 points for Lee Seung Gi’s stunt performance and 0.25 points for Suzy picking up Arabic for this show. We’re recognizing the actors for effort at this point.
I am thoroughly disappointed with this production given the immense budget they were given as well as the fact that it was pre-produced from start to finish. It wasn’t even like the writers were pressured (as they typically would’ve been for real-time productions) to come up with episodes. It got so bad that my only motivation to finish was so that I could see how much worse it could get and how much more I could possibly hate one show.
Everyone (including Suzy) did all they could to carry the writing but when the scale is so terribly off-balanced, there’s only so much you can do to make it better without crossing the line and overacting. Unfortunately, this is the type of writing where great actors go to die.
On another note, the first three episodes were gripping and intense, with incredible stunt performances by Lee Seung Gi. My final thought would be that this type of plot would’ve been much better in a film than a drama setting given the limited ways the story could be extended to reach 16 episodes. The level and quality of stunt work in the action scenes are very close to elements you would see out of a Bourne, Mission Impossible or Daniel Craig James Bond film but even with that in mind, you’d be better off just watching those films than toughing this one out.
