Vincenzo () is a 2021 South Korean television series starring Song Joong-ki as the title character alongside Jeon Yeo-been, Ok Taec-yeon, Kim Yeo-jin, and Kwak Dong-yeon. It aired on tvN from February 20, 2021, to May 2, 2021, every Saturday and Sunday at 21:00 (KST); each episode was released on Netflix in South Korea and internationally after its television broadcast.
The first episode reached a 7.7% rating (AGB nationwide), making it the fourth highest-rated tvN drama premiere. The finale received 14.6% rating, making it the eleventh highest-rated drama in Korean cable television history at the time. It also made the series the sixth highest-rated drama in tvN's history.
The series was also popular among international viewers through Netflix, maintaining its position in the top 10 TV shows on Netflix in the world since its start and reached the fourth rank on April 26. It ranked fourth on Forbes list of most-viewed Korean series on Netflix in 2021.
Synopsis
At the age of eight, Park Joo-hyung (Song Joong-ki) is adopted by an Italian family, but the family later dies tragically in an accident. Joo-hyung joins the mafia and is adopted by Don Fabio, head of the Cassano Family who treats him like a son. Renamed “Vincenzo Cassano” he becomes a lawyer, a consigliere for the mafia, and Don Fabio's right-hand man. After Fabio dies, Paolo, Fabio's biological son and the new leader of the Cassano Family attempts to kill his adoptive brother out of jealousy because Fabio favoured him over his own biological son.
Vincenzo flees to Seoul and sets out to recover 1.5 tons of gold in the form of Buddha statutes that he helped his business partner (a recently-dead Chinese tycoon) secretly stash within the basement of Geumga Plaza. During an inspection of the building, he discovers that he needs to demolish the place to retrieve the buried gold. However, a subsidiary of a large pharmaceutical corporation Babel Group has illegally taken ownership of the building with the intention of demolishing it to build a business building. Unwilling to let the gold to fall into the hands of Babel Group, Vincenzo must use his skills to reclaim the building and recover his fortune.
Among the quirky tenants at Geumga Plaza is the Jipuragi Law Firm run by Hong Yoo-chan (Yoo Jae-myung) in which Vincenzo finds he has aligned interests. At first he comes into conflict with Hong Yoo-chan's daughter, Hong Cha-young (Jeon Yeo-been), an attorney for a rival firm that defends Babel Group. Under the order of the top legal advisor of Babel, Hong Yoo-chan is murdered in the middle of the street. Enraged, Cha-young angrily resigns from her firm and takes over Jipuragi and teams up with Vincenzo to take down Babel. It is revealed that Hong Yoo-chan is killed because he managed to discover that Babel Group is a shell company for a drug cartel and left some clues for his daughter and Vincenzo to find.
Realizing that conventional legal method cannot do anything against a powerful corporation like Babel, Vincenzo uses his Mafia methods to fight the corporation violently, including kidnapping and torturing Babel employees for intel as well as setting their drug manufacturing facility on fire. He also starts persuading mistreated employees of Babel to be their allies to destroy the Corporation from within. Eventually, Vincenzo manages to find a way into the gold vault underneath the building without having to demolish it. Aside from the gold, he stumbles upon a USB left behind by his deceased business partner called the Guillotine file containing incriminating pieces of evidence against Korean politicians as well as Babel Group which his partner uses as leverage against both Babel and the politicians under this payroll. Babel Group learns about the Guillotine file and seeks to obtain it so they can blackmail tons of politicians for their advantage.