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Narco-Saints is a new Korean Netflix drama, which starts with a not-quite-brief introduction where Ingu Kang (Ha Jung-woo) tells us about a country in South America called Suriname, with a population of 500,000 people, half of which are involved in the drug trade, at least making it can ethnically-diverse and multilingual business. Question is – how did this Korean guy get involved? Well, he will answer the question..
In short, after his Dad fought in the Vietnam war, from 1968 – the year our protagonist was born, he worked his fingers to the bone, and while Ingu is also a hard worker, he doesn’t want his life to have the same fate. Sure, he wants a wife and kids – that situation coming along rather unconventionally, but also wants to be more comfortably off.
Ingu’s plan, with his best friend Eungsoo, is to sell knock-off skate – a delicacy where he lives, because the Suriname people like fish, but not skate. So, he’s like the Del Boy of skate! But his wife isn’t happy as his endeavour will take him away from their home life.
Even more to the point, the army want to ‘help’ him, but help costs, and right here’s where you start paying… Naturally, Ingu and Eungsoo bite off more than they can chew, in what’s stated here as being “inspired by a true story, but characters and events have been reimagined for dramatic purposes”.
Overall so far, I quite enjoyed this, and I’d certainly watch a second episode. I can see it would take a second one to get into things more, but prior to the streaming date, I only had chance to catch one episode.
Thanks to our friends at Netflix for the screener prior to release.
Narco-Saints is not available to pre-order on Blu-ray or DVD, but is on Netflix from Friday September 9th.
Detailed specs:
Cert: 
Running time: 60-70 minutes per episode (6 episodes)
Release date: September 9th 2022
Studio: Netflix
Format: 2.00:1
Director: Jong-bin Yoon
Writers: Sung-hui Kwon, Jong-bin Yoon
Music: Galaxy Symphonic Orchestra
Cast:
Ingu Kang: Ha Jung-woo
Eungsoo – best friend
Jeon Yo Hwan: Hwang Jung-min
Choi Chang Ho: Park Hae-soo
Byeon Ki Tae: Woo-jin Jo
David Park: Yoo Yeon-Seok
Gallas: Chidi Ajufo
Chen Zhen: Chang Chen
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.