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Pachinko Review

Pachinko is a 2022 drama television series created by Soo Hugh and starring Youn Yuh-jung. It’s a sweeping and well acted, but overstuffed drama.

This saga chronicles the hopes and dreams of a Korean immigrant family across four generations as they leave their homeland in an indomitable quest to survive and thrive. In this era, these family sagas that span decades are rare, which is why Pachinko is wonderfully endearing and old-fashioned in its approach.

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With that being said, while I do appreciate its epic scope, I also find its overstuffed nature suffocating as it is concerned with so many characters and numerous arcs set in a couple of different time periods that it ended up being a bit too much for me. I respected this show more than I genuinely enjoyed it.

The standouts in this competent cast include Youn Yuh-jung, Lee Min-ho and Jin Ha. The first of the three is an Oscar winner. She was wonderful in ‘Minari’ and as the matriarch of the series she was deeply moving and memorable. The other two were both excellent with Lee’s character receiving a terrific backstory in that incredible seventh episode.

Pachinko is wonderfully made as its editing, directing and casting were all top-notch. The score and cinematography are both superb, effectively elevating the show to a cinematic status. The pacing, though, is all over the place as the eight episodes are quite long and thus many times I got bored with the lesser arcs and those less interesting characters.

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