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Stream It Or Skip It: ‘A Model Family’ On Netflix, A New Korean Series That Riffs On ‘Ozark’

 The Gist  Park Dung ha  Jung Woo is an adjunct professor at a local university and in his efforts to get a tenured position he paid off a professor using money that his family had reserved to get his young son Hyun woo Seok Min gi a heart transplant. His wife Hyun woo  Seok Min gi is ready to divorce him. And the professor he paid off was just arrested the money he needed for his son is gone.





As he drives home from work he has rear ended by a van as he talks to his son on the phone. When he walks back to the van he not only sees two dead bodies but a sack full of money. While Dung ha knows the money is likely dirty he has so desperate he hatches a plan to keep it. This includes taking the bodies back to his house and burying them in the yard cleaning the van and abandoning it. What he does not bargain for are DUI stops and buried cell phones keeping his teenage daughter Yeon woo Shin  soo awake.In the meantime a cartel strongman named Gwang cheol Park Hee soon is looking for the van as well as the men and money inside. When he has alerted by Joo hyun  Park Ji yeon  another cartel operative who was tracking the van he gets his men to try to figure out where the van has been. Their search leads them to Dung has neighborhood.


Our Take Written by Lee Jae gon and directed by Kim Jin woo A Model Family sets up a somewhat familiar scenario  see the Ozark mention above  but with its own intriguing twists and turns. Unlike Ozark where the main character was already laundering money and needed a lower profile place to do it the main character in this show Dung ja gets into the laundering business because of desperation and greed.When that car with the bodies and cash in it rear ends him he has at his lowest point. So there does not seem to have any qualms with taking this blood spattered money if he knows it will go to good things like a new heart for his son. Do we want to know a little more about what he had to do to get him to the point where he had to bribe that professor that got arrested? Sure but Jung Woo does a great job of showing Dung jas despondency, then his manic desperation to cover things up so he can keep the money.


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