I actually watched this one a year ago, I think, but never posted on it. But after I watched Officer Black Belt with Kim Woo Bin, which was awful, I went back and rewatched Black Knight to remind myself what he can do with a decent script and director.
Black Knight is based on a Korean Webtoon about life in a near-future Seoul in which the sun has been blocked by an asteroid strike that also killed most of the world’s population, including its plants and animals, and so the few remaining humans are forced to live on oxygen produced from “oxanium” deposits left by the meteor and mined by Cheonmyeong corporation. That makes Cheonmyeong’s delivery drivers heroic figures who fight off roving hordes of bandits to hand over their live-giving supplies. But if you’ve read this blog before, or watched pretty much any K-drama, the fact that there’s a chaebol involved means something is rotten in the state of dystopia. And sure enough, the Cheonmyeong heir, Ryu Seok, is up to shenanigans I don’t want to spoil but that involve some unauthorized human-subjects experiments with a soupçon of eugenics. Fortunately, our main characters are here to throw a wrench in his creepy works: Yoon Sa-wol, a refugee who dreams of being a Deliveryman; 5-8, the top Deliveryman at Cheonmyeong, who turns out to have been a refugee himself; and Jeong Seol-ah, the head of Government Intelligence who gets drawn into the conflict because her sister dies in a failed kidnapping attempt orchestrated by Ryu Seok and because she took in Sa-wol in penance for gunning down his family in a raid on a refugee camp years before.
Kim Woo-bin, as 5-8, is probably reason enough to watch this terse six-episode series. He does the strong, silent type with the absolute best of them (though the paucity of his dialogue might have as much to do with the fact that he was recovering from nasopharyngeal cancer treatments at the time as with the character brief; on that note, pretty sure all the smoking he does in the series is CGI). But he’s matched by an excellent supporting cast, the plotting is super-tight and keeps you clicking “Next Episode” to find out what happens, the action is great, and the dusty, desolate sets and post apocalyptic costuming fit the vibe of the story perfectly. There are definitely weaknesses, but they lie not so much with the Netflix adaptation as in the original webtoon material: namely, the corrupt/ecocidal/homicidal/genocidal/mad-scientist villain (I mean, pick a lane! That being said, my dude Song Seung-hoon from Black plays Ryu Seok as elegantly as one can under the circumstances); and, the utter implausibility of the head of government intelligence simultaneously hiding a refugee in her house and being so bad at her job that Cheonmyeong can kidnap her family members while she’s at work…in a place where everyone’s house has cameras….
But don’t let those quibbles keep you from watching Black Knight if you like sci-fi series and/or Kim Woo-bin. It’s most definitely worth the minor investment of 6 episodes.
The Rookery 