I don’t like narcotics stories. Narco storylines are the only ones deemed fit for Latino and Latin American protagonists in Hollywood, and they frequently portray the locales in which they are located through a sepia-soaked stereotype filter.
Having said that, Narco-Saints, despite the name on the tin, ended up being far more than I expected. The six-episode South Korean Netflix Original, directed by Yoon Jong-bin and written by Yoon and Kwon Sung-hui, starring Ha Jung-woo, Hwang Jung-min, and Park Hae-soo.
Kang In-Gu (Ha Jung-Woo) is a guy crushed by an ever-growing debt in Narco-Saints. He’s only trying to live, having led a difficult life, lost his parents, and is now responsible for his own family (even if his family started of necessity and not love). When a buddy approaches him about launching a skate fishery in the fictionalized version of the South American country of Suriname, he finds himself in an impossible predicament.
The skate he’s seeking to benefit from puts him squarely in the crosshairs of two warring Asian gangs and the cartels with whom they collaborate to ship cocaine to South Korea and China. Stuck between death and poverty, Kang is forced to work with the South Korean NIS and Choi Chang-Ho (Park Hae-soo) to apprehend Jeon Yo-Hwan (Hwang Jung-min), a preacher and drug lord who controls Suriname’s drug trade.
Narco Saints’ entire primary cast is firing on all cylinders. The interplay between drug kingpin Jeon, NIS officer Choi, and the guy thrust in the middle of this criminal fight Kang is one of power shifting. While Choi is arranging a wider expedition to end Jeon’s drug trafficking, Jeon is attempting to extend his empire and become Suriname’s lone name in smuggling.
This allows the two to combat one another through proxies, outwitting each other and feeling the impact of the other’s character despite having little interaction.
While actor Park has earned a name for himself on prior Netflix shows as a brutal and unyielding force in Money Heist and Squid Games, Park is calm, focused, and attempting to be a beacon of morality while simultaneously influencing Kang in his way to bring a stop to the drug trade in Narco-Saints.
Hwang Jung-min is terrifying as Jeon, but not in the sense that he was the antagonist in Deliver Us From Evil, who was mercilessly bloodthirsty and obsessed with vengeance. Jeon, who tempting to pass for a mild-mannered pastor, is charming, and his approach to charismatic Christianity aids him in wooing his followers, forming a shield.
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One of the themes that Jeon uses is the lengthy history of Christian cults that have come up to mislead practitioners, notably in South Korea. While we see how the veneer allows Jeon to continue his cocaine trafficking, we also see the genuine belief and lives being wrecked by it, which the practitioners are unaware of.
Finally, Kang serves as the story’s main character and the eyes through which we observe everything.
He wants to survive, live, and bring money home so that his family can have a future. While his initial attempt at a fishery is to take advantage of a failing system that favors foreign fisheries since they are cheaper than Korean fisheries, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with it.
Kang is not a bad man wanting to become a nao, but rather a man forced by circumstance. Becausehis intelligence and quick survival wit honed by a hard life, he gets to become an active player on the board rather than just a piece being moved around by Jeon and Choi.
