D.P. (TV Series, 2021)
★★★★☆
D.P. (Which stands for Deserter Pursuit) is a South Korean military action series that's streaming on Netflix as of the date this review is being written....
The protagonist of the story is An Junho , a young man with a tumultuous childhood. He has a calm and introverted personality, he is a skilled fighter (due to the necessity to defend his mother from his abusive father), and is very intelligent.
Junho , just like any other non-disabled South Korean man over the age of nineteen , must serve at least 20 months in the military. We in fact see our protagonist enlist at the very start of the series.
The military environment is unfortunately not so welcoming though. Severe abuse , bullying and psycological and physical torture seem to be the norm. Junho is somehow able to get a break from this hell by joining the D.P. division , a group of soldiers whose job is to capture deserters. And just like that we follow the duo of An Junho and Han Hoyul during their different missions and adventures.
The social critique and commentary in D.P. is very strong and powerful , and I was pleasently surprised it included a storyline centered around a character part of the LGBT. We see things through the lenses of the protagonist , who is overall a good and kind person , but the show doesn't shy away from questioning everybody's moral compass and calling out the collective cowardness of the soldiers.
The casting for this was excellent , not just for the solid main cast , but also for secondary characters, whose actors delivered an impressive performance such as Choi Hyunwook, Cho Hyunchul and Jang Seongmin.