Some series take a whole episode to find their tone. My Name finds it in the first ten minutes and never lets go. A teenage girl watches her father being shot dead on her doorstep. The police get nowhere. So she goes to the one man who might help: Mu-jin, boss of the Dongcheon drug ring and her father's oldest friend. He makes her strong, gives her a new name and sends her into the police as his mole. From there the series does what the best noir does: it keeps asking who she is when nobody is watching.
Netflix released all eight episodes on 15 October 2021. If you missed it then, now is a good moment to catch up. This review contains no spoilers.
Han So-hee, all the way in
Before My Name, Han So-hee was best known for melodrama and romance. This was her first action role, and she did not do it halfway. She trained at an action school almost every day for nearly four months, gained about ten kilos and did her fight scenes without a stunt double. You can see it. The fights are short, heavy and clumsy in the way real fights are, and her character takes as much as she gives.
What makes the performance, though, is what happens between the fights. As Oh Hye-jin, the rookie detective, she has to look calm in an office full of people she is lying to. As Ji-woo, she has to stay cold in front of a man she may not be able to trust either. Han plays both sides with very little dialogue. Most of it is in her eyes, and in how long she waits before answering.
Most of it is in her eyes, and in how long she waits before answering.
Two fathers, one lie
The undercover story is an old one, and director Kim Jin-min and writer Kim Ba-da know it. What keeps it tense is the triangle around Ji-woo. Park Hee-soon plays Mu-jin as a gang boss who is gentle, patient and frightening at the same time, a father figure you should never fully believe. On the other side, Ahn Bo-hyun plays Pil-do, her partner in the narcotics unit, a straight detective who slowly starts to see more than she wants him to. Every scene with one of them is shadowed by the other.
The twists come in the right places. A few you may guess, at least one you probably will not, and none of them feel cheap: the series plants the clues early and lets you find them on a second look.
Dark, and proud of it
This is not a series for a cosy evening. The streets are wet, the offices are grey and the violence is bloody. That darkness is a choice, and it works: there is no comic relief to break the tension and no romance subplot to soften the edges. With eight episodes of around an hour, there is no filler either. Every episode moves the story or tightens the noose.
The catch
If you do not like violence on screen, stay away: the fights are realistic and some scenes are hard to watch. The ending also splits viewers, as good noir endings often do. For us it is exactly right. My Name is one of the best Korean action series on Netflix, and the reason Han So-hee is now taken seriously as an action lead. Our rating: five lightsticks.
My Name at a glance
- Where to watchNetflix
- Released15 October 2021, all episodes at once
- Episodes8
- DirectorKim Jin-min
- WriterKim Ba-da
- Genreaction, crime, noir
Main cast
- Han So-heeJi-woo, who joins the police as Oh Hye-jin to find her father's killer
- Park Hee-soonMu-jin, boss of the Dongcheon drug ring and her father's closest friend
- Ahn Bo-hyunPil-do, a detective in the narcotics unit and her partner
- Kim Sang-hoCha Ki-ho, leader of the narcotics team
- Lee Hak-jooJung Tae-ju, Mu-jin's right-hand man
- Jang RyulDo Kang-jae, an ambitious Dongcheon member
How it did
In its first week the series reached No. 3 on Netflix's global Top 10 for non-English TV, with 41.78 million hours viewed, and it was in the Top 10 in 58 countries. Before release it was shown in the On Screen section of the 26th Busan International Film Festival.
Sources Netflix Top 10: week of 11 October 2021, The Korea Times, Korea JoongAng Daily: Han So-hee says goodbye to pretty, Soompi: Han So-hee on pushing her limits, UPI: My Name tops charts.
