On New
Year’s Eve 1982, Baek was badly stabbed while chasing the mugger who grabbed
his girlfriend Seo Yoon-jung’s purse. Fortunately, he was revived in the
hospital. On New Year’s Eve 2014, the hospital uses the same old defibrillator to
revive Kim when he is shot while arresting a perp. Somehow, the two men become linked
through time. When they dream, they watch the other man’s life unfold. As a
result, Kim also develops an attachment to Seo. Therefore, he is rather shocked
to meet Jung So-eun in his own time. She is the spitting image of Seo and also
happens to teach physics at the same high school.
Unfortunately,
Kim will also be quite disturbed when Seo is murdered by a serial killer in the
early 1980s. However, Baek will use information gleaned from the cop’s access
to case files and old new clippings to prevent further killings. As if the
stakes were not already high enough, Kim learns the killer has already/will
eventually murder/ed the wife of his seriously intense captain.
The
first half of Renegades is cleverly
plotted and surprisingly poignant. At around the midway point, all the internal
time-space-continuum logic breaks down, but adrenaline takes over in its place.
When stuff radically changes as a result of Baek’s actions, just go with it and
don’t sweat the pedantic fiddlesticks.
Lee
Jin-wook is a solid action lead as Kim the rookie copper, but Jo Jung-suk gets
the better of him as Baek, a Wrong Man-style
everyman, but with a generous extra dose of fierceness. However, Im Soo-jung
outshines everyone as Seo and Jung. Thanks to her sensitive portrayal, Renegades works both on the level of a
Richard Matheson Twilight Zone episode
and his fantastical romantic novels, like Somewhere
in Time.
