I have to confess that it has always given me a tremendous laziness get on the bandwagon of the great television phenomena when they are in full swing. It happened to me with ‘Game of Thrones’, which I entered once its second season ended to end up totally hooked and, if we stick to the Spanish factory, it happened to me with ‘The paper house’ that was even in the soup during its three seasons —or five parts— monopolizing the series conversation and saturating the media.
Fortunately or unfortunately -this is still unknown-, I never got to get into the creation of Álex Pina; something derived from media overstimulation, from the increasingly notorious excess of productions to watch either for pleasure or obligation —and due to the obvious lack of time—, and due to a lack of interest in a formula that, a priori, never came to fruition. get my attention at all.
As a devotee of the cathodic and cinematographic benefits of the South Korean industry, the arrival of ‘Money Heist: Korea’ has given me the perfect excuse to immerse myself in this reinvention of the original series. But, after entering it with many expectations, I ended up abandoning the ship after its first barsproving that, after all —and regardless of nationality—, the Netflix series was never made for me.
Wet paper
I can’t deny that the start of ‘The paper house: Korea’ has made me want to take the production directed by Kim Hong-sun. And it is that its premise, which places us three years in the future in a scenario in which the two Koreas are in the process of reunification and sharing an economic system giving rise to an almost dystopian socio-political scenario, is not only very interesting; it also promises to rise as a unique hallmark for this remake.
Unfortunately, the first jug of cold water arrives when verifying that the juicy approach remains practically anecdotal, relegated to the background and making way for some dramatic decisions without much weight in the story. The balance, luckily, does not take long to balance thanks to the brio of its narrative – with a relentless start, guided by the use of voiceover – and the great asset of the show: its fantastic cast.
If there is something that manages to elevate the South Korean ‘Money Heist’, it is the list of names that join its cast; in which national celebrities of the stature of Kim Ji-hoon, Yunjin Kim, Ji-Hoon Kim or Won-jong Leeand which finds its three main claims in Park Hae Soo —’The squid game’, Yaksha’, ‘Hunting time’—, Yoo Ji Tae —’Old Boy’, ‘Donggam’—, and in a Jeon Jong-seo who dazzles once again after falling in love in ‘Burning’ and in ‘Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon’.
But the effects of the spell soon wear off as the narrative hits the brakes and shifts the point of view away from the robbers for the first time. that’s when the initial spark dissipates and opens the door to many topics of the subgenredisplaying a predictability unbecoming of South Korean dramaturgy that, moreover, is translated on screen without that extra atmosphere that usually permeates the thriller of the Asian country.
It may be that, ultimately, my hopes placed on it and my —with few exceptions— fantastic experience with its national products have meant that, despite going virgin to the proposal, ‘The paper house: Korea’ has been translated into a disappointment with which I have no intention of continuing. With the whirlwind of weekly releases and a bubble of streaming more and more bloated, 12 episodes of more than an hour is too high a price to pay after a contact as bitter as this.