Renacido Rico (2022)

If Machiavelli knew the future, had a pack of abs and the world's baddest grandfather...

Listen to me. Before reading this review, I need to ask you a question:

Why do you want to watch this drama? Is it because you just want to be entertained by unbelievable but extremely exciting twists at every turn or you want a drama with solid writing, realistic and logical storyline with no plot holes whatsoever?

If your answer is the latter, then our conversation ends here and I would have to regretfully say my goodbyes but if your answer is the former? Then, please. By all means, stay.

Reborn Rich is pure adrenaline rushing, thrill inducing crack of a show that offers you absolute entertainment for all of its 16 episodes.

So let me explain what you’re going to like about this show:

☑️ Song Joong Ki kicking absolute ass:
Song Joong Ki’s character here is this brilliant edge lord who is out for revenge, equipped with the power of the future, an IQ of 600 and skin that’s as smooth as a baby’s butt. While he is not the most well layered character out there with incredible depth or substance, he does excellently deliver your quintessential hot, charismatic and conveniently overpowered oppa character that’s easy to root for and puts on a great show.

☑️ The baddest grandfather alive:
The biggest winning point for me was definitely Lee Sung Min’s grandpa. His character is as vicious as they come. A true anti-hero with the greatest business acumen, greed for expansion and corporate ruthlessness. For all intents and purposes, the grandfather is a character with flaws and yet the one that you will come to love the most. His relationship encompassing love, compassion, respect and at times rivalry with his grandson (Song Joong Ki) is easily the highlight of the entire drama.

☑️ Acting and Music:
The drama is complemented with an emotional and powerful soundtrack that beautifully underscores impactful scenes. Moreover, the acting is excellent across the board which is unsurprising considering the veteran cast. I am not the biggest fan of Song Joong Ki’s work and I do believe he tends to only play certain types of characters he is comfortable with but even I have to admit that he really shines in some of the scenes in Reborn Rich. Acting wise, for me this is his best work yet.

☑️ Storytelling, politics and the battle of wits:
As someone who is doing her MBA and is an Economic major, I absolutely ate up all the business politics and corporate talk. The main lead knows the events of the future and uses that knowledge to play with stocks and investments so it benefits him. His back and forth with his rivals is so entertaining to watch. The politics and scheming aspect is executed quite well and never gets boring or stagnant.

☑️ The controversially out of the box ending:
Ok, so this is something you might not like. The majority of the people hate the ending and I can see why. I, for one, absolutely loved that they attempted to go so out of the box with this one. I wouldn’t in my wildest dreams have been able to predict the way the drama ended. It’s a very brave and ambitious route to take and while it doesn’t have the best execution, it’s still a commendable attempt by the writer.
I loved the way the author was able to run the story of a brilliant, young potential heir of the powerful Sunyang group parallel to the poor, desperate employee working at the same Sunyang and let the two worlds coincide beautifully.

Now, let’s go over the drama’s weak points:

❌ Romance and the female lead:
This is an unfortunate pattern that most female leads in a Soong Joong Ki drama are mere props with not much contribution to the plot. The female lead is the same here and the actress who isn’t given much to work with in the first place, delivers a quite bland and unexciting performance. The couple lacks any substantial chemistry and the romance isn’t believable. This is why it has been a relief for me that throughout the drama the love story was just a sub plot and shelved to the back whenever it mattered.

❌ The Execution:
Like I said, while I understood what the writer was trying to do with this, the execution is choppy at best. You have your favorite truck of doom making quite a few appearances, you have extremely convenient plot devices trying haphazardly to fill up the writing loopholes.

If you consider the way the story flows, it just doesn’t have the best writing out there. Some characters aren’t given proper development, others are introduced just for plot procession, while others are taken out abruptly or change drastically for the same purpose: to move the story forward or fit a particular narrative. Ultimately, this drama is more focused on the next big thing rather than the nitty gritty's or the development of its characters.

✅ Ending Thoughts:
This is the drama that you watch if you just want a good time. It has its emotional moments (especially in the way it masterfully explores the relationship between a prickly grandfather and his overly intelligent grandson), its moments of laughter and lots of scheming and fun twists.

Right from the start, it's obvious that the show requires a lot of suspension of belief and logic because it's just not that deep.
So if you’re willing to take it as an easy entertaining journey, then there’s no reason you shouldn’t be immersing yourself in pure Sunyang madness and hatching your own plot to take over the world!

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Logic is non-existent, let's be real, everyone is only watching it for Song Joong Ki

Reborn Rich, a drama based on a web novel, is yet another story that uses the "born again" concept. It introduced the main character of Yoon Hyeon Woo, who, despite his stellar results in high school, had to give up going to university because his family could not afford his tertiary education. In an era where full scholarships and bank study loans probably had not been established in South Korea, Hyeon Woo joined the mega-corporation Soonyang after leaving school and soon climbed the ranks to become a senior finance manager in rank, but super-manservant in practice. In spite of his hard work, he was betrayed and discarded by the very people he served, and subsequently found himself reliving the life of a young boy, Jin Do Jun, the youngest son of the youngest son of the founder of Soonyang.

Most of the above was already given to us in the synopsis, and from what I have seen, Song Joong Ki performed far better in his role as Hyeon Woo than in his role as Jin Do Jun. As Hyeon Woo, Joong Ki's expressions were more real - in moments of servitude, he was spontaneous, relenting, and in times of panic, his fear more raw, the helplessness he was supposed to feel more convincing. The reborn Do Jun, who had lived through all of the 2000s before, knowing what would happen when it comes to government politics, monetary policies, and global catastrophes, was the character in focus for much of the story, but even so, I couldn't feel the impact of this character the same way Joong Ki delivered Hyeon Woo.

The second time skip happened when Do Jun grew up, but we can assume he didn't finish his law studies or sat for the bar, because by that time he didn't need to - he just had to get really rich. Did he commit insider trading through his ability? Yes, of course - coming from the future, he already had information on what happened in the past, and utilised that information to earn a lot of money. But because of the supernatural circumstances in how he obtained the information, no one can prove that insider trading happened. This is the secret of the bulk of his success for most of the drama. Nevertheless, the first few episodes had a decent start and a reasonable flow of congruency.

The basis for this drama is how the rich and powerful Jin family operates their business. Whether one finds the business principles interesting or otherwise, with the most basic understanding of the subject, following the drama would not be a challenge. However, even with the most basic understanding of the subject, this is also where the flow of logic started to break, and repetitions set in. Every one or two episodes, a "twist" happens for the sake of providing some "shock value" to the viewers, but provides no progress in plot development. The ongoing crisis is merely dropped and waved away while another new trouble is brewing. And every one or two episodes, someone's office will be raided; they will be investigated for committing a business crime, but no worries, the cheap contrivances in attempting to produce anxiety rush in viewers peters off like a whiny balloon out of air when the climax ends. And so, for 14 episodes, the focus were placed on business operations, and the phenomenon of time reversal and soul-switching were not at all touched during all that time. How was this explained in the end? It's "redemption".

I never expected solid logic from fiction, but I was still hoping for some level of cogency. Reborn Rich quickly became boring and ridiculous to me as the episodes went on, and by Episode 8, the drama was a chore to watch. The human relationships in this drama also leave much to be desired, as no one is honest with one another. The closest thing to honesty was seen in the grandfather-grandson bond between Do Jun and Yang Cheol, but even then, the two exercised a moderate degree of caution against each other. The romance between Do Jun and Shin Hyun Bin's character Min Young was initiated early, but it was marred with doubts, mistrust and misunderstandings. Seong Jun's wife, who initially had a crush on Do Jun, was introduced as a highly intelligent and ambitious woman who eventually resigned to her fate as a marriage pawn to a less capable heir. She became a character who seemed to have a lot of cards on her hands only to be relegated to appearing once in a while, having all purposes stripped from her.

The final two episodes would only be a surprise if the viewer has gotten used to Do Jun's rich and comfortable lifestyle, thinking all would just end with him becoming the CEO of the whole Soonyang Group, marrying his lovely girlfriend whom he doesn't understand and who doesn't understand him, chugging along with a fat ass account loaded with money for the rest of his newfound identity. So maybe getting killed in the first place wasn't that bad after all - but nah. Off pops the bubble, the rose-tinted glasses shatters, 16 hours of a lifetime watching this drama gone, and comes the cries of despair of the ones heavily invested. No, I lied. It really wasn't that devastating. But Hyeon Woo did become better off - by becoming a new partner of Miracle Investment. And the way it transpired? No explanations required. Doesn't matter that a person currently under criminal investigation is not allowed by law to work in any business or finance-related capacity. It's okay, no one will look for this detail. When this happened, there were approximately 20 minutes left on the final episode, so the writers probably thought, eh, whatever, let's just wing it.

And of course the final nail in the coffin was a recorded phone conversation, which is the same like, way too many dramas out there. This wouldn't be absurd with today's technology, but we are talking about 2004 when people were still using the most basic flip phones. A majority of people still alive today have lived through this era with a flip phone. Phone conversations do not automatically get recorded. The phones in that era did not even have a recording function, what more to say a convo-recording function. Yes, this drama is fiction, but the idea of writing fiction is skillfully imbibing and presenting theories that the audience could not refute. It's usually either because the theory itself is a fact, or it is unproven and vague. To say a flip phone in 2004 automatically records conversations as soon as a call is made or answered is like saying carbonara tastes like chocolate, which it doesn't.

I will add that with all the flaws and absurdity typical of a Korean drama with a vengeance-agaisnt-a-rich-family setting, this was somewhat 2% better than Vincenzo and not as bad as Eve - which is arguably the worst drama of the year. Reborn Rich obtaining an 8.8 rating is not a testament to how good the drama is. Like many MDL ratings, it's a reflection of how many people have watched it and how many people love it. Correlation does not imply causation, so if Song Joong Ki's face is all you need to preoccupy yourself for a weekend binge sans sense and logic, by all means, watch it. But this isn't a good script by any definition of the word.

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