Brief Story Line
South Korea was widely regarded as one of the safest country due to its prohibition of firearms sale and ownership. So it came as major surprise when Lee Do (Kim Nam-gil - Nocturnal, Island TV series etc), a police officer who had knowledge of guns from his previous time in the special forces was called to check on the findings of some bullets in an unexpected location.
Though he was not a detective, Lee Do did some investigation on his own and met a mysterious person called Moon Baek (Kim Young-kwang - Runway Cop, Evil Live TV series etc) who ended up helping him. As they did more digging, they found that recent increase in violent crimes were heavily linked to the firearms and decided to do everything they could to prevent more violence.
So how would the story conclude? You could find out in this series.
End of Brief Story Line
I purposely wrote a brief story above as adding more info would reveal the major plot which I think would be better found out by yourself. When I was watching the first episode, I felt it to be a gloomy drama with dark tone even from beginning. After passing the mid part of the episode, I could guess where it was heading, but nothing prepared me for the graphicly shown violent scenes before the end which made me intrigued of what would happen next.
As the story progressed, we were introduced to more people who would have importance to the story and somehow made the series felt more intense and dramatic as I could imagine how their lives would be impacted. The subsequent episodes were pretty exciting with some nicely done car chase and gun fight scenes. There was a supposedly surprising twist in the mid of the series but I am sure that people who had watched many series/movies such as my wife could have guessed (or at least had a feeling) like I did. So it did not came as a shock for me.
During the final few episodes, the story became heavier and the ending was not exactly what I had hoped for, even if I could understand why it was done in such manner. In fact I was not too satisfied with the conclusion of one of the characters in the 6th episode which coincidentally was one of my favorite episodes, along with episode 4 and 8. Aside from the two lead cast above who I thought were pretty amazing, there were quite a lot of support but significant characters such as cleanup squad leader Jeong-man (Park Hoon - Harbin, Remarriage & Desires TV series etc), police sergeant Hyeon-sik (Kim Won-hae - Dead Man, Fiery Priest TV series etc), Jung-tae who was studying to become civil servant (Woo Ji-hyun - Decibel, S Line TV series etc), Mrs. Oh (Gil Hae-yeon - Unlocked, The Haunted Palace TV series etc), Won-seong the criminal with ankle bracelet (Lee Suk - Lucid Dream, Love to Hate You TV series etc), bullied student Gyu-jin (Park Yoon-ho - Study Group TV series etc) and many more.
I did not find anything this series was based on, so the writer/director Kwon Oh-seung should be applauded for his creativity. considering he only had one work to his credit, i.e the 2021 movie titled Midnight. The series was categorized as limited by Netflix which was plus point for me, although as I said above, seemed like the fate of some people were not properly resolved. There were 10 episodes overall with varied duration between 37 to 61 minutes which was shorter in reality as first few minutes was taken from end of previous episode and it has rather long closing credits. I think that was the reason I was able to finish the whole series in short time.
Overall this was a dark series with heavy topic that started strongly with high intensity, some good action scenes where once again we could watch Kim Nam-gil showed his awesome fight moves, plus some dramatic moments. However the appearance of few Westerners was not really my favorite part and the ending was not too great to my opinion especially the unsatisfying conclusion of some characters. So if you are interested in watching a thought provoking action thriller drama, then you are welcome to give it a try. It certainly gained enough momentum as the series became top 10 in a lot of countries (including number 1 in Indonesia). Though I was delighted with the action sequence, but I personally would be more satisfied if it has different ending.
Mike's movie moments rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
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