Payback: Money and Power (2023)

Compelling, complex vendetta, expressive play, impressive spirit & cunning plot development

KDrama Orbit starts into 2023 just as the year 2022 had been – full of productions with their fingers put right into the sore of wounds of society, savouring its imbalance with relish. "Payback: Money and Power", again, is one of those. It offers an exciting, astute, complex and clever story about revenge against those giants, who can hardly ever successfully be confronted by legal means. Money helps… those... who want to have things turn out the way that they prefer… who can afford to have things turn out the way that they prefer... who have a strong vision, too.

The underlying premises are pretty sobering, yet well-known territory in KDrama land:
-The system (democracy and the rule of law) serves the money, not the people, because the people who fill the system with life can be bought.
-Power and money are inseparable.
-Hierarchical class thinking is far from overcome. The value of a person's wealth directly determines their value as a human being.
-Huge fortunes and legality rarely go hand in hand.
-The good news for the wealthy: money can buy you justice (and law).
-The bad news for the ordinary: Life is unfair.
-With legal means (alone) justice is not a given.

"Payback: Money and Power" bluntly takes all of these premises and blends them in a vendetta against Goliath revisited. Therefore, David first becomes a Goliath himself. In this case, David's real name is Eun Yong. He has risen from a penniless, simple young man to become the CEO of a private-equity fund who successfully speculates astronomical sums of money. Together with a team, that for him is family, too, he takes on a financial cartel in which politicians and especially the public prosecutor's office are also involved. Thus, it is not played fairly. On the contrary: it is actually life-threatening.

So, at first glance the plot doesn't seem to promise much that's new. Nevertheless, "Payback: Money and Power" offers a dense, strong story, with expressive play and impressive spirit. The presence of the mimes in front of a rough, gloomy background is haunting. To be honest, I paused for a moment - not sure whether I really want to know and see everything or rather drop. Eventually, I couldn't help it, couldn´t let go of it. I WANTED to know and see. The impression, the KDrama left with each episode, was just too powerful... And I'm thoroughly glad about it. A great story. With a considerably cunning plot development. Despite the underlying bitter seriousness an invigorating (for all the refreshing poetic freedom - e.g. not everyone is as talented, tactically adept, self-confident and yet grounded in a good balance of heart, mind and soul as Eun Yong) and encouragingly optimistic perspective.

Oh, actually, here's another premise I forgot to mention at first...
-But what a relief that the law still exists... and also those few, who stick to it, believe in its value and power, and thus keep fighting for it with wits and passion...

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Tries too hard to recover its own mess

The premise itself is pretty interesting and the backstories of each character are well established and play vital roles in the story. The first few episodes that lay down the groundwork are fine but towards the later part, the story kinda becomes a mess and kinda hard to keep track of all the cases/investigations going on.
Personally I find the director's or writer's decisions pretty questionable as they lead to multiple plot holes or rather "plot-conveniences" which are kinda outta nowhere.
The drama kinda tries to portray the ML to be somewhat of a genius. But following the events of the drama it's pretty clear that he's nowhere near that status. Instead he frequently endangers his allies in some gamble that has extremely low odds of happening, yet they happen (plot convenience lmao). He also doesn't take the antagonist seriously enough even though he's evil af and can kill anyone without batting an eye. The ML takes multiple Ls yet never actually mends his ways to prevent past mistakes.
Also the drama tries too hard to portray the nephew as some sort of important character even though he is the most underachieving person in the entire setting.
The ending is clearly rushed with the absence of any real climax. The good guys beat the bad guys within just a few minutes and nothing much is shown as how they did it or any buildup whatsoever.
Overall the drama begun as a promising one but went downhill and never recovered. The music was nothing much memorable. Perhaps acting was the strongest point in the entire series.

I wouldn't recommend watching this unless you have waaaay to much time to spare or are a big fan of any of the actors.

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