‘Bloodhounds’ Review: Brotherhood, Fist Fights, and Deadly Loan Sharks
Netflix’s new crime drama, Bloodhounds (사냥개들), follows two talented young boxers who join forces to help a billionaire and his adopted granddaughter fight a loan shark. It is an eight-episodic series with heavily well-choreographed sequences and a blossoming brotherhood with two disparate personalities getting tangled in the elite world. Jason Kim, who wrote for Barry and Girls, and directed Midnight Runners, uncovers what happens when two good people meet and fight evil.
Set in the early days of the pandemic, the people living in Seoul are being scammed by loan sharks. Small businesses aren’t getting a lot of customers due to the restrictions set by the government. People who own these businesses are desperate to keep them afloat.
Gun-woo’s (Woo Do-hwan, The King: Eternal Monarch) mother owns a small cafe. He participates in boxing tournaments to help his mother pay for the rent and trains at the local gym at night. He faces Woo-jin (Lee Sang-yi, Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha) and wins the tournament. When Gun-woo’s mother, Yoon So-yeon (Yun Yoo-sun), desperately signs a deal to take out a loan to help her small cafe, she gets scammed by the rich and powerful Kim Myeong-gil (Park Sung-woong) and goes into crippling debt. Myeong-gil’s men assaults So-yeon, demanding she pays the loan money. Gun-woo defends his mother but gets badly beaten by the gangsters.
Woo-jin helps out by introducing Gun-woo to President Choi (Huh Joon-ho), a paraplegic billionaire who gives an interest-free loan to help So-yeon. He hires Gun-woo and Woo-jin as bodyguards to protect his adopted granddaughter, Hyeon-ju (Kim Sae-ron). She digs up information on Meyong-gil and his business Smile Capital’s nefarious activities. The trio discovers that Myeong-gil and his illegal empire are not easy to take down.
At the heart of Bloodhounds drama is the friendship between the mismatched pair: Gun-woo and Yoo-jin. Gun-woo and Woo-jin have very different personalities and fighting styles; the former is more disciplined due to his quiet and sincere nature, while the latter is quick and flashy because of his extroverted and loud behaviour. They form a friendship due to mutual respect for their skills and shared history in the Marines. With an effortless rapport between the pair, they can balance each other’s humour and fighting style. It’s interesting to see their dynamic on screen, from funny to heartfelt moments between them and then to bloody action sequences that show how much their friendship grows.
While their friendship keeps the story grounded, the action sequences dominate the series. Each episode has almost 3–4 fight scenes. The audience can see the vast differences between Gun-woo and Woo-jin’s growth and style to determine their distinct personalities. The action sequences are realistic, but sometimes it can be hard to pay attention to the long sequences. There is such a thing as too many action sequences.
Due to this, the story barely makes a cohesive narrative structure. The series has fascinating characters with moral and immoral motives. But the overlong episodes become repetitive, with enough time to flesh out the characters. It becomes hard to keep track of what is happening. Some of the episodes are stretched out for dramatic purposes.
Bloodhounds has many thrilling, unpredictable and shocking moments. The story is built with choreographed sequences, which is one of the extraordinary parts of the show, along with the brotherhood of Gun-woo and Woo-jin. This isn’t a show that any viewer would want to go to for emotional connection. It’s solely written for pure entertainment value with serious punches against any evil forces.
