‘The Glory’ Review: Revenge Is Better Served Cold

Revenge tales can be some of the most cathartic stories in fiction. To see someone take justice into their own hands and see all the bad guys get what is coming to them is very satisfying. Directors like Quentin Tarantino have made an entire career out of the concept. So we can say that the idea of a revenge tale will always have the potential to captivate us and makes us enjoy the stories on another level. The Glory, the newest Netflix drama series coming from South Korea, does just that, and it is one of the darkest dramas coming from the Asian country.

The Glory is a Korean drama starring Song Hye-Kyo, Lee Do-hyun, and Aria Song. The series tells the story of Dong-eun a young girl who is the victim of some serious and horrifying bullying at school. Sadly, Dong-eun is all alone, so she has no one to protect her in the face of a group of students that enjoy torturing her on a physical and mental level. However, when Dong-eun grows up, she comes back to her hometown with a very meticulous plan to destroy the entire lives of those who wronged her in the past.

The Glory presents its first part, containing 8 episodes, with a second part coming at some point next year to finish the story. This is, without a doubt, one of the darkest Korean dramas to be released on the streaming platform. The setup is terrifying and seeing truly evil people do evil stuff is quite unnerving. However, this horrifying setup basically justifies everything that our main character Dong-eun does during the entire runtime of the show. After what these people did to her, it is easy to support Dong-eun in her quest for retribution.

Like many other Korean dramas of this nature, the story takes its time to set up characters and take them through the motions. We spent a lot of time meeting characters in several timelines and then seeing how these characters just interact with each other. The show is very retrospective, and so Dong-eun reminisces a lot about her past and present, and this might slow down the pacing of the show to a crawl at times. Some moments of reflection could be cut out from the series to make the story’s pacing a lot better, but The Glory doesn’t work differently from any other Korean drama.

The show puts a lot of focus on the characters, which means that the actors are an essential part of this story. Their reactions and the way they interact with others will be the things you want to watch. The plot moves forward very slowly, and while there are cool revelations and twists here and there, it is the moments when the characters find out about these moments that make the series shine. The entire cast does an amazing job, and they all should be congratulated.

However, Song Hye-kyo, and Arian Song are stand-out performances. Their characters go back and forth between the moment when they were at school and also the moment when they are adults. Both sets of actresses really do an amazing job, and one cannot work without the other. Dong-eun is a very complex and gray character. You know she is doing some very dark stuff and that she might be losing herself in the completion of her revenge, but at the same time, you will want for her to go all the way on every level.

Visually, the show does a good job of creating the correct atmosphere. The series works by creating some very dark scenes. The director really knows how to pull off excellent cinematography that reveals the characters’ intentions and desires in the clearest way, without having to say anything. Some of the series’ most powerful moments come in the form of the characters just reacting to something, while the camera allows the darkness to cover them in their solitude.

As a story, The Glory works by the strength of its actors, but the writing is sometimes repetitive and too overly dramatic. The episodes love to repeat things that were established very well in past episodes, and it all really hurts the pacing. If there is something that might make some people just drop the show, it will be the slow pacing. Sometimes it feels like the characters are just extending the runtime by talking about things they have already talked about, and it feels like a cheap tactic to fill out all eight episodes.

In the end, The Glory is a very dark and satisfying revenge story that might get hurt by being too slow and repetitive. The actors are all doing an amazing job, especially the ones playing the main characters. Part one ends on a cliffhanger, but if you already reached that point in the story, then you will be ready to wait a number of months to see part two and the end of this revenge tale. This might not be an easy binge-watch, but for those wanting to watch a revenge tale, this is as good as any.

SCORE: 7/10