Forget Game of Thrones and Succession!

This show is an amazing revenge drama! Its complex plot is beyond compare and may put some viewers off after watching the first few episodes- but if you have a little patience, trust that all will become clear as more episodes follow, you will be rewarded with an awesome viewing experince!

I'd never thought a show with a financial backdrop highlighting the inner machinations of a chaebol would ever hold any interest for me - but this show is absolutely not what you'd expect from reading the plot synopsis.

Much like the US dramas mentioned above, this is a psychological drama, a portrait of several families corrupted by the greed for power and money and the toll this takes on the individuals. Lives are blighted and ruined and it is absolutely intriguing, suspenseful but also painful to watch.

I can't imagine how the writer could have come up with such an intricate, complicated plot - the mind really boggles! I don't think I have ever had to follow such a tangled web of fateful encounters, murderous schemes, past betrayals, adultery, political corruption and manipulations followed by the most brain-twisting machinations and plots by the various interested parties to try to hide them.
There are unlikeable characters in Moneyflower, but the writer has managed to make them incredibly multi-facetted and threedimensional in a way that is very rare to find in a TV drama. As a consquence, the viewer cannot easily pick a favourite character to wholly cheer for or to wholly despise outright.
I have not discovered a single glaring plot hole which can often be found in such intricate plots. There are a few very convenient, fateful co-incidences and one lightning-speed recovery from a coma - but a regular viewer of Kdrama should be familiar with these tropes and not be surprised by them.

The closest comparisons to this show I can think of are the already mentioned Game of Thrones and Bloodlines (a Netflix production) - these were similarly focused on family, power, the internecine struggle for the one true, legitimate succession within a powerful family (business).

On the other hand, Moneyflower's central character's dilemma also reminded me an awful lot of HAMLET in that roughly speaking, in both:

the rightful successor to a powerful family (Hamlet/Kang Pil Joo), whose father has died under questionable circumstances ( Hamlet sen. is poisoned/Jang Eun Cheon's father's life support switched off prematurely?), has to use all his faculties and deceive everyone as to his true intentions (Hamlet's "antic disposition" and alleged madness/Kang Pil Joo's myriad manipulations) to survive in a poisonous, treacherous, shark-tank environment (Elsinore/Mooshimwon) whilst trying to avenge past wrongs, surrounded by untrustworthy minions and spies (Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern/Secretary Oh), with support from just one trustworthy friend (Horatio/Yoo Gong) all whilst having to come to terms with a doomed love interest (Ophelia/Mo Hyun), whose terrible fate and mental torment he is largely responsible for....

There's a HUGE price to pay for Hamlet to get his revenge in the end - oh my! I do hope Moneyflower ends differently but - I'm not too hopeful that Kang Pil Joo's quest for revenge will succeed as he intends...

What more is there to say?

ACTING:
The acting is so good I don't know what to say. There is no way I could imagine any other actors portraying the characters than the ones cast here. I am running out of superlatives. This is really the best of the best.
As a viewer, your emotions will get a thorough workout if you have come to care for the fate of one or more of Moneyflower's characters.. This can be quite exhausting, but once having become involved and interested in the characters, you will love, hate, despise, sympathise, pity the characters -sometimes within the space of a single scene you will go from wishing them dead to a form of sympathy and pity...

Having just finished the last of the episodes I'm still completely bowled over by this drama.
Most impressive in addition to the amazing plot is the acting - honestly I don't think I can praise this acting ensemble enough! I wish I knew how and where Korean actors learn their craft. I'm so curious as to how they manage to express so many conflicting emotions with their facial expressions and eyes.

I want to especially mention Lee Mi Sook - I was terribly prejudiced against her because of her surgically altered looks. But although I am deeply, deeply disturbed by her looks and saddened by what she has done to her face to make it look so alien and artificial, her performance as Jung Mal Ran has really impressed me and won me over. She really is a good actress and manages to convey emotions very well despite the fact that her face is very masklike. It is a shame to think what level of expressiveness she might have still had at her disposal had she allowed her features to age naturally and her face to be less frozen...

The three younger actors playing the central trio of Kang Pil Jo, Jung Cheon Boo and Na Mo Hyun were also exceptional. Just perfect. Fans of Jang Hyuk will get exactly what they have come to expect from this actor: a perfectly nuanced performance depicting a complex character's emotions, making the viewer empathise so much with his painful past experiences that shaped Kang Pil Jos's motivations for his actions in this drama. There are lots of scenes with Lee Mi Sook where the two almost set the screen on fire with their unusual, uncomfortable, erotic chemistry! (Best have a fire extinguisher at the ready!) The intimacy is almost unbearable to watch sometimes.

The young couple Jung Cheon Boo and Na Mo Hyun are written as extremely complex, well rounded characters with some major character growth and development that both actors show beautifully. I particularly LOVED Na Mo Hyun - this is one of the most satisfying female characters I have come across in KDrama so far! Do not be fooled or put off by her happy-go-lucky naivete in the first few episodes! She undergoes some major changes that are deeply satisfying to watch esp. as a female viewer!