After "Squid Game" seized the world's attention, K-drama fans were stuck with the tiresome duty of explaining to the noobs that the heightened social commentary that supposedly made it stand apart from other shows is, in reality, a feature of the genre. Whether we're talking about romances, comedies, thrillers, or cop shows, nearly all of them contain some element of class friction and wealth disparity.
"Black Knight," being a post-apocalyptic action thriller, makes the class struggle more front-facing while following common tropes of dystopic fiction. Here, writer and director Cho Ui-seok gives us an alternate Korea run down by "Mad Max," the product of a comet crashing into the Earth and destroying 99 percent of its population.
Within that supposedly lucky one percent is an ever more fortunate .05 percent, give or take, that has roofs over their heads and live in districts, a la "The Hunger Games."
There are even luckier people with that sliver living in an orderly community complex close to a place called the Core, home of the all-powerful "Matrix"-esque architect who conceived of it all. He's nestled safely in his pristine chamber, cocooned by a massive video wall and lording over the population's oxygen supply.
Not even that man is the most responsible for humanity's day-to-day survival, however. That duty falls to . . . the deliverymen.
Here is the first of several ways "Black Knight" may resonate differently between cultures. The first hook may be the hotness of its stoic working-class hero 5-8, played by model-turned-actor Kim Woo-bin. He'll get your order to your door safely – guaranteed! – and he'll also blast his way through any obstacle preventing him from doing his job. (Also, despite ubiquity of toxic grit and the scarcity of clean water, his complexion? Flawless.)
5-8 and his allies careen through multiple conspiracies set in motion by a corporation known as Cheonmyeong Group, the show's version of an Everything Store and the company that employs them. Cheonmyeong works hand in hand with what's left of the government, which ensures that the highest levels of the company are corrupt.
"Black Knight" uses the current era's dominant paranoia as a launchpad. Although a virus isn't to blame for its society's ills, this is quite recognizably a pandemic-era fury, down to a late-stage twist that could be interpreted as a wink at wingnuts.
Cho probably doesn't mean for the show to bang on those buttons, but who can say? We all went through the same crawling nightmare that froze the world in "shelter at home" mode for years. Many of us came to view certain global conglomerates as go-to suppliers and the people bringing us their packages as essential workers.
As the COVID crisis eased, the burdens shouldered by these gig workers did not, and we went back to taking them for granted. Americans may no longer appreciate Door Dash drivers and the UPS guys like we used to, but Cho transforms them into saviors and vigilantes for justice. Everybody deserves to be celebrated by way of a power fantasy, so it's not tough to love this stand-in for those delivery-app warriors who you should probably tip more generously.
5-8 is the best of the best at a job few can hack. That also makes him a celebrity. If you lived in a gray world with particulate-clogged air, you'd look forward to regular visits from Mr. November too.
Alas, 5-8 doesn't care about your feelings and isn't trying to be a walking "special delivery" porn cliché. As Cho's script explains in the expository dump that is the opening episode, deliverymen are highly skilled fighters-for-hire, able to outrun or fend off marauding bands of hunters. Essentially they're an unsanctioned military force that happens to drive trucks, with access to decent housing as a perk of the job while the least fortunate are relegated to shantytowns choked by poisonous air.
This caste is called the "refugees," although they're as Korean as everyone else – and the surface twist is that 5-8 and his closest confidantes used to be refugees too. So when they're off the clock they bring sustenance, oxygen and medicine to those most in need, and defend the poorest of the poor from the corporation's overreach.
The vilest devil isn't Cheonmyeong's top executive but his class-supremacist son Ryu Seok (Song Seung-heon), whose plans serve his interests and those of the wealthiest survivors. He'd love for the impoverished to starve, or worse. One of his mad-scientist hobbies involves the exploitation of mutants.
Oh, did you think there wouldn't be mutants? Of course there are mutants. There's also an honorable military officer, Major Seol-ah ("Kill Boksoon" star Esom), whose team is an outpost of honor working within a compromised system. She's caring for a sister and an adoptive brother, Yoon Sa-wol (Kang You-seok) who dreams of becoming a deliveryman. They only know 5-8 by reputation when the show begins. That quickly changes.
You can almost predict some conversations "Black Knight" may yield as viewers parse meaning from layers of social commentary that aren't particularly stealthy. Cho may be attempting a critique of corporate hegemony or simply plugging into the long-established fact that the world's richest men have enough money to make their Bond villain fantasies of surviving the end of the world in luxury, or on Mars, into a reality. Either way, we're better off taking this as a shoot-'em-up-meets-Robin Hood spree instead of a deep discourse generator.
The same visual effects company that made the high school zombie romp "All of Us Are Dead" produced the desolate Seoul seen in "Black Knight," and while the effort is impressive you can also see a few of the seams dividing the blue screen and the actors. That only kills the mystery if those bells and whistles are important to you; it's plain that the gunplay and action choreography are Kim's prioritized co-stars.
As a six-part action stampede, "Black Knight" does its job efficiently and forcefully. Provided you don't overthink its turns into familiar corners of whack-a-doodle menace, it's also sufficiently entertaining – especially since its cast is a smoke show, much like the sky above Korea after the world has ended.
All episodes of "Black Knight" are streaming on Netflix.
