The Marked Heart Season 1 review: The Colombian series on organ trafficking is just a guilty pleasure watch

2.5/5

Story:

The story of the drama focuses on Simon whose wife Valeria gets kidnapped and murdered for her heart. Simon, hell-bent on finding the truth and avenge his wife's death, realises that he has fallen in love with the woman who has his wife's heart. The series explores the dark world of illegal organ trafficking.

Review:

The series opens with the story of a happily married couple, Simon and Valeria with two kids. Their lives seem perfect until they meet with an accident and Valeria gets abducted. She is then killed and her heart is extracted for a recipient Camila, who is on her death bed in the hospital. Camila, who is married to Zacarias, a political advisor to a presidential candidate, runs into Simon later and the two fall in love. Later, Camila finds out that her husband has paid to get Simon's wife killed for her heart transplant. He also gets blackmailed by the organisation that runs the illegal organ trafficking for secrecy in exchange for certain policy changes to help their business in case his candidate wins the elections.

The first episode introduces all main characters in the first few minutes, telling parallel stories but does not give enough time for each and hence, seems a little jarring.

As it is originally a television series, the story can be expected to be soapy and have a few over-the-top dramas. The series is a total guilty pleasure watch, packed with thrill, romance and a lot of drama. The story initially goes as predicted with the recipient Camila receiving a heart from a healthy person and falling for the husband of her donor, without understanding why. The doctor who conducts her transplant surgery tries to explain her dreams and visions, calling them nothing but a myth but being the adamant person that she is, she even goes to a Tantrik to do some ritual to find out the information about her donor as she constantly feels that the heart does not belong to her. She feels her donor is trying to communicate to her, trying to tell her story and how brutally she was murdered to harvest her heart. Camila becomes a completely different personality and starts liking what Valeria used to like.

The show promotes the cliche belief that a human being feels all emotions through 'his heart'. The love of Zacarias for his wife Camila is also tried to be justified here as he says he killed an innocent woman only to save his wife's life. While giving a statement to the police after learning the entire truth, Camila is also seen justifying her husband's acts, saying that he loves her so much. Her mother, who trades her life to be the First Lady, also believes what Zacarias did can be justified and tries to convince Camila about it. It raises the question of what's right and wrong but a murder may not be justified as an act of love. It pokes one's fantasy about having a wealthy, loyal and good-looking husband who would go to any lengths for his love. While one kills for love, the other puts his life into danger to find the truth. Later, the sincere police officer, as predicted, is also shown to be sold out to the organised crime as the criminals threaten to kill his family if he did not oblige.

And to make the story even more twisted, the makers also have a plot twist with Simon's daughter Samantha's story. She is seen getting involved with a teenage druggie, who is too involved with the killers of her mother. Innocent, she gets attracted to the 'bad' boy and falls in love with him. Her boyfriend has a change of heart as it says, 'love can heal anything'.

The series mostly holds on to viewer's attention only because it sheds light on the illegal racket of organ transplantations and how it is operated. With 14 episodes of over 40 minutes each, it can be exhausting to binge-watch it, though engaging. At the end of the series, you just hope that the story ends there. But unfortunately, it doesn't. It ends with a cliffhanger moment and a new plot twist. It just reminds one of never-ending Indian television series but of course, the drama is comparatively toned down in this one. Season one of the series ends with you wishing there was no more to the story.

Verdict:

The series, though long, makes for an engaging one-time watch with crisp writing and brilliant performances.