Stream It Or Skip It: ‘No Way Out: The Roulette’ on Hulu, A Korean Thriller Series With A Cop Forced To Protect An Infamous Criminal

As No Way Out: The Roulette drops onto Hulu, the South Korean mystery-thriller is crossing noir-ish vibes with the social media mania of our modern age, and a chunk of Bane-like super criminal plotting to keep things interesting. Cho Jin-woong stars in No Way Out as a police detective caught up in an escalating plot that involves mysterious cash rewards, an even more mysterious individual in a fencing mask, and decisions he made on the fly that are probably gonna hurt him in the long run. Directed by Choi Kook-hee and written by Lee Soo-jin, No Way Out: The Roulette also stars Yoo Jae-myung, Greg Hsu, Lee Kwang-soo, Yum Jung-ah, and Kim Mu-yeol.    

NO WAY OUT – THE ROULETTE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT? 

Opening Shot: A roulette wheel spins, and suddenly we’re in a meat freezer, where a frantic, bloodied man hides. He’s discovered by a guy with a knife, and it’s clear they know each other.

The Gist: “Who’d give you one billion won?” The hiding man protests, but his counterpart isn’t hearing him, and in the struggle that ensues, Ji-hong cuts off the ear of Chang-jae (Lee Kwang-soo) with a meat slicer. As police detective Baek Joong-sik (Cho Jin-woong) soon learns, this forced organ removal is part of a larger, internet-based plot masterminded by a masked man with no name. He really did give Ji-hong a billion won for cutting off Chang-jae’s ear. The cash is packed in a case, emblazoned with the same swirling insignia that appears on the masked man’s enclosed helmet. And when Joong-sik finds this case in the course of investigating the incident, he keeps it rather than admitting the money into evidence. In Joong-sik’s personal life, he’s got debts no honest man can pay. He has a wife and a teenage daughter, and they are gonna lose their house.

If it seems unethical and a just plain bad idea for a detective to keep money linked to a mysterious internet plotter who’s instigating violence-for-payout schemes amongst the general public, it becomes an even worse idea when the police begin a larger investigation into the masked man. “You were at the scene,” Joong-sik’s boss asks him. “Was there money at the guy’s house?” Joong-sik denies this, and thinks about how he already spent part of it. Meanwhile, the now earless Chang-jae has fled the hospital where he was being treated, put together Joong-sik’s involvement, and even has video footage of the detective taking the money. When the masked man announces the giveaway of another one billion won, this time at a baseball stadium, it’s pandemonium as people push their way past police barriers to desperately grab whatever cash they can. 

“Shall we play the next round?” Joong-sik has managed to keep the money he took secret. But the masked man’s setups are becoming more elaborate. On his social media feed, he spins the roulette wheel again. Tick-tick-tick it whirs, past positions like “Cut off ear” and “drown” and “break arm,” finally landing on “KILL” as the comment field pops off. “There it is,” he announces, fencing mask in place and his voice electronically altered. “Kill Kim Guk-ho,” and I’ll give you 20 billion won.” The police can’t believe it. Kim Guk-ho (Yoo Jae-myung) is a high-profile criminal set to be released from prison in just a few days. Now the whole country could be looking to snuff him out and collect the cash. Baek Joong-sik will be put on Kim Guk-ho’s protection detail as the criminal’s lawyer and son get involved, and a slick professional hitman known as Mr. Smile (Greg Hsu) travels from Taiwan to Korea to kill Kim and collect the bounty for himself.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Yoo Jae-myung, who plays Kim Guk-ho in No Way Out: The Roulette, also stars in the rousing Netflix historical drama Song of the Bandits. And speaking of Netflix, Cho Jin-woong was at the center of the cops-and-crime thriller Believer and its recent sequel. 

Our Take: It took more than a few minutes to really get into where No Way Out: The Roulette is taking us. But we found that once its separate story threads began to collate, we were totally on board. First, there is the Kafka-esque quality of Detective Baek Joong-sik’s predicament. He took money that didn’t belong to him, cash provided by a criminal that’s also connected directly to increasing bloodshed. Which would be wrong enough from an ethical perspective. But isn’t it just like too good of a thing to be not good at all? We’re engaged with Joong-sik having to cover his tracks while being inserted by his superiors into the next phase of the case, which itself is made much more intriguing by the emergence of the Masked Man. He wears garish suits, and a fencing helmet that transmits strange designs. He’s obsessed with his custom-made roulette table, and with the social media reaction to his violent, cash-addled showboating. What’s his deal? Is he even a man behind that mask? And will he target Joong-sik or his family personally, now that the detective absconded with the money that was, er, earmarked for the ear-slicer?  

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: The Masked Man has delivered his new ultimatum. Kill Kim Guk-ho, and someone’s one billion won richer. “I don’t care how, but I wish you’d do it in style…”

Sleeper Star: Oh Woo-ri plays patrol officer Park Eun-jeong with a frenzied glee, and while it gets on Detective Baek’s nerves, we love the energy. Keep trying to find those bad guys, Officer Park!  

Most Pilot-y Line: The Masked Man seems to be as much a lover of eccentricities and violence as he is a reader of the comments. “People accusing me of not paying, saying it’s aggro, noise marketing, and that I’m lying. I thought of quitting. But instead, I generously prepared a surprise for you.”  

Our Call: STREAM IT. Releasing the first two episodes of No Way Out: The Roulette at once was a good idea. The series starts slow but builds up steam fast as Baek Joong-sik’s opportunism comes back to haunt him and the Masked Man’s social media schemes take on new and more deadly dimensions.

Johnny Loftus (@glennganges) is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift.

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