Worlds collide! Omega X recently posted a behind the scenes video about maknae Yechan’s involvement with this South Korean television drama. But before checking it out I was wondering to myself if it had anything to do with the Bryan Cranston series of the same name. Being just lazy enough, I never actually looked any of that up. Instead, I was surprised to see Your Honor available to watch on my flight from Seoul to Bangkok and back!
At the heart, this adaptation is the same as the original, which actually hails from Israel. Song Pan Ho is a righteous judge with a spotless reputation. In an instant, he is willing to put that all on the line for his son. What did his son do you might ask? Well, within the first minutes of the series, we see Ho Young driving away from his mother’s grave a weeping and wheezing mess. While taking a puff of his inhaler, the sun’s glare means he doesn’t see a motorcyclist that he ends up hitting head on. In a panic, Ho Young drives away from the scene, botching an emergency call in the process.
Kim Sang Hyeon is Ho Young’s innocent victim, and it’s determined that had Ho Young actually stuck around, Sang Hyeon might have survived. Pan Ho is ready to have Ho Young confess his sins at the police station until he learns of who the victim is. Not only is he a young man, but he also happens to be the son of Kim Kang Heon. Having just been released from prison, he is quietly seething about his youngest son being taken away from him. He immediately starts the hunt for the culprit with revenge at the forefront of his brain. His eldest, problem child Sang Hyeok returns home from America only to cause more chaos and carnage. While Kang Heon can cover up almost everything and get away with it, his son is causing more problems than he’d like.
Somehow, Pan Ho gets involved with Kang Heon’s hunt, the latter man oblivious to Ho Young’s involvement in his despair. The middle episodes got really muddy with a multitude of characters and lots and lots of double crossing that kind of had me confused at times, though I did see the overlap. I appreciated the complications it added to the main storyline. It seems the US series simplified it’s plot in that way, which I also didn’t mind. I think I needed to see it the first way to even begin to comprehend what was going on here. Some righteous detectives get involved, but they too aren’t as squeaky clean as we expect all law enforcement to be, but at their core, they want Kang Heon and Sang Hyeok to go down for all of their past crimes. So you know, two birds, one stone.
In the end though, Pan Ho’s lies catch up to him in a devastating way. I will say, the twist at the end is not at all the same as the US story and I found this ending much more juicy. My mouth definitely fell open on the plane. In the end, both Pan Ho and Kang Heon lost what was closest and most important to them. It begs the question of how far is too far? I also like that we never really get a true good guy in this series. You’d like to think Pan Ho is, but what he commits throughout the series all to protect his son seems almost worse than the initial crime. I approve of this remake!