Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Vigilante’ On Hulu, Where A Model Police Academy Student Metes Out Punishment To Under-Sentenced Criminals On The Side

A new action series from South Korea may look familiar to fans of CBS procedurals, namely The Equalizer. It’s about a police academy cadet who goes out on weekends and beats the living hell out of people whom he determines got light sentences for their violent offenses. Is it about anything else? Not really. But that’s not a bad thing.

VIGILANTE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A 12-year-old boy sits in a courtroom, listening as the man who killed his mother gets a far too light prison sentence.

The Gist: Ten years later, the same man who got the light sentence gets on a bus and beats the living daylights out of the driver. When he gets off, he’s confronted by a man in a hoodie, who follows him down a dark alley. As the hoodie-clad man beats the snot out of the man who killed his mother, he says “Thanks for remaining a piece of shit.”

Kim Ji-yong (Nam Joo-hyuk) is in the police academy and is a model student there. But on weekends, he goes out and finds people who committed heinous crimes, for which they got light sentences, and metes out his own brand of justice. It started with the man who killed his mother, but it soon extends to others, like a doctor who sexually assaulted a patient and didn’t lose his medical license or thugs who come back to threaten their last victim’s family after their arrest warrant was canceled.

Choi Mi-ryeo (Kim So-jin) brings the story of a man she calls “Vigilante” to the news director of the cable news station where she works. She thinks she’s on to a fantastic story, given the uproar over the light sentences perpetrators of violent crimes have been getting of late. She certainly wants to point out that the victims of these crimes get identified in the media but the perpetrators do not.

To draw out the Vigilante, the report that introduces him to South Korea reveals the name of a sexual predator, currently on an ankle bracelet and not in prison, to the public. The blowback is severe, as the predator’s apartment building is overwhelmed with protestors. Somehow, though, the man slips out. Ji-yong, listening to the report, manages to find him, right before he’s about to finish off one of his previous victims.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Think of Vigilante as a South Korean version of The Equalizer.

Our Take: Based on Kim Gyu-sam’s webtoon of the same name, Vigilante‘s story is pretty straightforward. Kim Ji-yong leads this double life, and he’s going to try like hell to keep his weekend crap-kicking activities as much on the down-low as possible. Helping him will be Cho Kang-o (Lee Joon-hyuk), a business scion who will likely fund his activities; investigating him will be Jo Heon (Yoo Ji-tae), with Mi-ryeo being among the journalists documenting everything.

And that’s fine. The show doesn’t have to be any deeper than that in order to be entertaining. As the Vigilante gains fame, there will be copycat attacks, and debates on whatever Ji-yong and his acolytes are doing is justified or not. There also seems to be some not-so-buried commentary on the light sentences violent criminals get and the fact that they aren’t named in the media, something that is a foreign concept in the US.

But the show isn’t trying to be something deep. Just like The Equalizer, it’s going to be about Ji-yong meting out justice to people he thinks didn’t get the justice they deserved. How you feel about that will likely guide how you feel about the series.

Sex and Skin: None in the first episode.

Parting Shot: As we see Ji-yong calmly walk down the street after his latest beatdown, we hear his voice over talking about light sentences, ending with, “Now I will fill that void. This… is justice.”

Sleeper Star: Kim So-jin as Choi Mi-ryeo, the reporter who introduces Korea to the Vigilante. What factor will she be as the Vigilante’s attacks become more publicized?

Most Pilot-y Line: The report about the Vigilante plays on the TV at the police academy’s lunchroom as Ji-yong and his buddies eat. As they talk about whether they are in favor of the Vigilante’s acts, Ji-yong hides his bruised-up knuckles under the table. Somehow, his buddies didn’t notice his hands and ask him about it.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Vigilante is a pretty straightforward show with a lot of action sequences. If you’re a fan of shows like The Equalizer, where bad guys get their due, then you’ll like Vigilante.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.