The new ENA’s drama “Evillive” tells the story of a humble lawyer Han Dong Soo (Shin Ha Kyun). He visits prisoners that don’t have any lawyers and represents them. They often laugh at him for it because he takes the “scraps”: cases no one wants to bother with. His wife works in the supermarket, and he takes care of his niece and pays hospital bills for his mother who has Alzheimer’s. His half-brother doesn’t have much in life as well: he works in a store where he sells second-hand computers or tries to fix them. He comes up with cases for his brother for a little percentage.
One time he gets the offer he can’t say no to because he needs money. The gangster Seo Do Young (Kim Young Kwang) hires Dong Soo to spy on his girlfriend. Soon Dong Soo realizes it’s not a simple cheating story and the fight for power among the gangsters is about to start. However, once he got in this case he can’t find a way out without him or his family getting hurt.
Dong Soo doesn’t look like a good fighter in his field or a brave macho man, so many treat him as shit. Do Young on the other hand looks and acts like a total psycho. The more Dong Soo gets involved the tighter his life intertwines with Do Young. And maybe Dong Soo looks like a pushover but everyone has a dark side that could wake up any moment.
A villain story
What we have is Do Young who used to be a promising baseball player but after he beat up a man on national TV, his life took another turn and he ended up as the #2 man in a gang. He’s a typical movie psycho: handsome and dangerous, attentive and smart, and appears mysterious while talking. You know the drill, right? It works every time, at least for me, because it’s always interesting to watch those types of characters.
On another corner of the “ring” we have Dong Soo, a pushover lawyer whom anyone can offend or mock. And knowing Shin Ha Kyun, there must be some spin on his character’s story, no way he will remain like that until the end. Shin Ha Kyun usually plays brutal physically strong characters, so Dong Soo is something new or should be turned into someone tougher.
So far the story sounds like: we screw up, now we are involved in illegal shit and need to find a way out, so we stick with gangsters to find dirt on them so we can be free. But we already saw glimpses of hidden rage in Dong Soo and I think Do Young is the right person to help that dark side in Dong Soo to wake up.
So my prediction is either Dong Soo outsmarts Do Young and wins his freedom (boring) or Dong Soo replaces Do Young and becomes the evil himself. The third option is: Do Young turns Dong Soo evil and then they form a dark-vibed bromance together.