(TV SERIES) A Shop for Killers Season 1 - An Entertaining Action Series with Unique Premise Based on Popular Novel

After its finale was released more than a week ago, I decided to give this series a try yesterday. It was a bit late as usually I would start new series once the final episode was released. But since there were so many new shows, movies and continuing other series that I had been watching for a while, it was kind of challenging to find the time to do so. Anyway, here's more on the series.

Brief Story Line

Jeong Ji-an (Kim Hye-jun - Connect TV series, Another Child etc) was an orphan who had been living with her uncle Jeong Jinman (Lee Dong-wook - A Year-End Medley, Bad and Crazy TV series etc) since her childhood years till she went to college. When Jin-man unexpectedly died, Ji-an returned home to handle the funeral arrangements where she met her old school friend Bae Jeong-min (Park Ji-bin - Children of Heaven, The Killer’s Shopping List TV series etc) who comforted and helped her in the difficult time.

Unfortunately though, Ji-an and Jeong-min were getting attacked in Jin-man's house by a group of mercenaries led by the sniper Lee Seong-jo (Seo Hyun-woo - Phantom, Celebrity TV series etc). Things gotten more complicated with the appearance of a mysterious woman later revealed to be Min-hye (Geum Hae-na) whose motives were unclear. 

So what would happen to Ji-an and why were the assassins trying to kill her after her uncle died? You could find out in the series.

End of Brief Story Line

OK, I got to admit that the reason I wanted to give this a try was because of its interesting premise and I saw in the social media that people were raving when they saw the first two episodes. And the first few minutes were enough to get me hooked and intrigued. As the story continued though, I had to make myself accustomed with the way it was told going back and forth in time. Fortunately the distinction of the past and present was very clear and quite enjoyable to watch, with the relationship between Ji-an and Jin-man as the highlight. It was fun looking at the very cool uncle taking care of the hot headed and sometimes rebellious niece from 7 years old through pre-teen and teenage years.

But obviously the main attraction for me was the action and the suspense of trying to save their lives from the swarm of attacks by mercenaries. It was entertaining to see how Ji-an had to use the "teachings" by her uncle to survive and the unfolding of the mystery surrounding the work her uncle did and the reason she was being targeted. However, the constant flashbacks and jumping to the present did make the pace felt a bit inconsistent. On the one side it was all suspense and thrill but on the other side it was much lighter. It's a good thing that those past scenes were quite important to the understanding of the story and aside from episode 6 that was full flash back, the rest of the episodes still focus on the present.

The series itself had the standard 8 episodes with varying duration of 44 minutes to roughly 1 hour. It made it not so difficult to finish the whole season like I did yesterday when I managed to complete all in 1 day, albeit nonstop with full concentration. Yes it did require us to watch it without distraction to avoid missing important details. I read also that this was based on the novel The Killer's Shopping Mall written by Kang Ji-young. Not too sure if the first season was fully adapting the novel or it was only from some of the chapters. But the ending seemed to open some possibilities for the future, even if I was rather disappointed with the final scene as it defeat the whole purpose of the first season and felt like it was done to keep us invested.

The cast involved in the series was pretty large as aside from the names I mentioned above, there were also support characters like the villain Bale (Jo Han-sun - Brothers in Heaven, Hot Stove League TV series etc), mysterious guy called Brother (Lee Tae-young), Jin-man's good friend Pasin (Kim-min) and many others. Perhaps my wife would recognize some of them as they were said to be special appearances. The action sequence were done professionally with some of the fight choreography done amazingly. The episodes that were very entertaining for me would be the 3rd, 4th and the 7th. Oh and once again I am unhappy with the dark setting in Disney+ which was confusing as it seemed to happen only on the new series/movies cause it was normal when I watch older ones. It reduced the element of fun when I was unable to see clearly the fights.

Overall to me this series was entertaining with many awesome action scenes and an interesting story. Obviously I liked it more if the series focused more on the present to keep the pace consistently suspenseful, luckily the showing of the past did not take so much time (unlike another South Korean series on Disney+ that took almost half of the season to tell what happened in the past before returning to the present). But it did became a bit repetitive when some of scenes were shown more than once to give different perspective. I also like the chemistry of the lead cast and the cast who played bad guys were totally convincing and really made us hate them a lot, especially Lee Seong-joo. There was also a surprise twist that I was a bit late in realizing which gave better entertainment value. So if you are interested in a cool action series with rather unique plot and good story, then I think you would enjoy this one. Just need to be accustomed to the back and forth story telling.

Mike's movie moments rating: 4 out of 5 stars