In Disney+ K-drama No Way Out: The Roulette, Cho Jin-woong leads a twisted thriller tale
Lead cast: Cho Jin-woong, Yoo Jae-myung, Kim Moo-yul, Yum Jung-ah, Lee Kwang-soo
Police and criminals toe a fine line in a game of life and death in the twisty new thriller No Way Out: The Roulette. Led by Cho Jin-woong (Signal) and Yoo Jae-myung (Itaewon Class), this hard-boiled series is the drama debut of film director Choi Kook-hee (Default, Life Is Beautiful).
Cho plays Baek Joong-sik, a detective who has been scammed out of a lot of money and desperately needs to raise some funds. Joong-sik is assigned to investigate the curious case of butcher Yoon Chang-jae (Lee Kwang-soo, Live), who is in hospital after his ear was sliced off.
Joong-sik’s investigation leads him to the home of Im Ji-hong (Hyun Bong-sik, Gyeongseong Creature), where he stumbles upon a carrier case emblazoned with a mysterious logo and stuffed with a billion won in cash.
Ji-hong makes a run for it when he returns home and, after being chased by Joong-sik, falls over and dies. Confronted with his dire circ*mstances, Joong-sik slips the case into the boot of his car before calling in the death.
The police soon learn what prompted the strange ear-slicing crime. A mystery masked man with a muffled voice – a common K-drama trope these days – appears online, offering large sums of money to people if they commit specific violent crimes as dictated by his customised roulette wheel.
After proving that he is good for the money by raining down a billion won from the sky, he spins the wheel again. This time the target is the notorious rapist and killer Kim Guk-ho (Yoo), who is about to be released from jail.
The prize is now 20 billion won (US$14.7 million), which he promises to anyone who manages to kill Kim.
In a twist of fate, Joong-sik is assigned to the police detail that must protect the vile Guk-ho from the many people hoping to score a fabulous payday, a scenario which calls to mind Takashi Miike’s Shield of Straw.
Meanwhile, Chang-jae is on the hunt for the case filled with cash, which he believes is rightfully his.
Roulette is a game of chance in which you bet on where a small ball will land on a spinning board of different numbers and colours.
However, as its title hints, No Way Out: The Roulette suggests that the game of chance that drives the story may be rigged, and designed as a reaction to another stacked deck, the social ladder, which only provides the illusion of chance and opportunity.
Participants in this dangerous game whether they like it or not, Joong-sik, Guk-ho and Chang-jae do what they feel they must to come out ahead.
Earlier this year, Netflix’s The 8 Show failed to connect with viewers, who found it too tonally similar to its all-time streaming hit Squid Game. No Way Out: The Roulette is in similar vein, with an illegal game bringing out the dark side of humanity through the promise of great riches.
However, there is a grunginess and narrative fluidity to the series that differentiates it from those glossy streaming originals while also recalling some of the greats of Korean cinema.
Among the latter is Kim Jee-woon’s brutal serial-killer thriller I Saw the Devil, with Guk-ho’s garish sweaters echoing the costumes of Choi Min-sik’s deranged killer in that film.
Another is A Hard Day, which also features a police officer doing bad things when he gets into a spot of financial bother, and things quickly spiralling out of control after that.
Cho appeared as the villain in A Hard Day – the role that made him into a leading actor – while the crooked police officer was played by the late Parasite star Lee Sun-kyun; Lee was to have played Joong-sik in this series but bowed out just as filming was beginning, when allegations related to his personal life surfaced.
Kim Moo-yul (Sweet Home season 2) and Yum Jung-ah (SKY Castle), who are part of the quintet of lead actors in the show, do not appear in the first two episodes.
Kim is slated to feature in upcoming episodes as Lee Sang-bong, a lawyer retained by Guk-ho, while Yum will play Ahn Myung-ja, the mayor of Hosan, the fictional setting of the series.
Morally and stylistically dark, although never so much as to be dour, No Way Out: The Roulette is the kind of thrilling and satisfying television where the next scene, let alone the final outcome, is difficult to predict – not unlike last year’s surprising A Bloody Lucky Day.
No Way Out: The Roulette is streaming on Disney+.
