Review: 'The Tyrant'

It isn't often that I finish watching a series and think to myself "Wow, I like a lot of things in this show, but I have absolutely no clue what I just watched." But that was certainly the case with this four-episode South Korean series that premiered on Hulu last week.

I was originally attracted to the show because it is helmed by Park Hoon Jung, who was able to create complex worlds that blurred the lines between good and evil in previous projects such as V.I.P and The Witch. The Tyrant also has that same stylish look wrapped in a lot of unsettling plot uncertainty. And in fact, parts of the plot of The Tyrant may or may not be set in the world of The Witch. I might be able to answer at least that question if I had a clue about what was going on in The Tyrant.

From what I can tell Jo Yoon So plays Ja Kyung, a killer for hire (maybe?) who also has a dissociative personality disorder that has her sharing her body with her twin brother. Kim Seon-ho returns to TV for the first time since Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha playing the Director Choi of Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) and he goes rogue after some super soldier program he is running is lost during delivery. There are multiple intelligence agencies shooting it out - including one that is supposedly American - while Ja Kyung strolls through the landscape killing people in some admittedly entertaining ways. 

Then the final minutes of the four-episode series include a flashback which pretty much made the previous four hours even more confusing. A task I thought was impossible at that point. 

The weird thing is that I enjoyed The Tyrant, even with the grandmaster level amount of ambiguity. It's a stylish, often incomprehensible series. But it also engaged me in a way that I appreciated. It's not for everyone - especially since it's subtitled but not dubbed into English. I can't say that I can recommend it exactly. But it might be worth checking out if South Korean spy noir is your thing.

Here is a look at the trailer, which honestly makes the show seem a lot more coherent than it feels while you're watching it.

The Tyrant is currently streaming on Hulu