The Worst Evil (2023)

Real drama of 90s - Chang Wook amazing transformation

I think it is the most realistic drama I had seen. The production is great and the atmosphere of the 90s is so real. I love both ML leads. They have done great job.

I love the development of Seung Ho and his fenomenal transformation from cop to thug as he really became one. And build thrue friendship with Ki Chul. Also Hae Ryeon character was great and she was the main character to comparation to Eui Jung as her character/acting did not left any expression on me.

Despite it has sad ending, I have to say it is great ending. Everyone gets what they deserve. Specially the fat cop as he was the most enoying character ever. I felt quite bad for Chul as he put his trust to wrong people and because of that he lost everything and everyone betrayed him. I could see the pain in his eyes as he confronts them and he had nothing to live for anymore.

I wish they could walk together through the streets of Gangnam forever. That last seen made me quite emotional.

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Neo Noir done in a pop culture friendly way

"A Pyrrhic victory is a victory that inflicts such a devastating toll on the victor that it is tantamount to defeat. Such a victory negates any true sense of achievement or damages long-term progress."

The Worst of Evil is truly a study of the psychology of a Pyrrhic victory.

It is a very , very, good watch and nothing to sniff at. I applaud the ease of the theme presentation and the accessibility of the watch , something that is very hard to do with morally ambiguous characters but this drama nailed it .

The watch is strenuous and far from a kick back watch . It is unrelenting in its brawn and dark in its resolve . I highly appreciate how all that unflinching and unrelenting darkness never let up for a second and was beautifully woven in the music , the acting and the dialogue.

I rate it an 8.5 because its definitely more than good but there is really nothing new being explored here. Its exploration is also not that novel but for what it is- its a wonderful drama worth a watch with standout performances by Ji Chang Wook, Bibi and Im Se Mi. I was not particularly blown away by Wi Ha Joon as I should have . I think he doesn't have the depth just yet to handle 4D characters like the gangster Jang Gicheul. I think a Woo Do Hwan (since they have a similar look) would have delivered that heart wrenching humanity coupled with a searing darkness. Wi Ha Joon made it very obvious he was playing a role.

Other than that - a very enjoyable drama with a lot of tension and thought provocation and soul stirring moments.

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A Gripping Drama with Ji Chang Wook's Stellar Performance

Worst of Evil is a drama that managed to exceed my expectations, largely thanks to Ji Chang Wook's phenomenal performance. Once again, he showcased his incredible acting range, breathing life into his character in a way that captivated me from the start. His ability to convey deep emotions and transform into his role so effortlessly is truly impressive. The drama itself kept me on the edge of my seat with each episode, fueling my curiosity and driving me to keep watching to see what unfolds next.

Admittedly, I'm usually not a huge fan of shows that lean heavily on realism, preferring more escapist themes in my viewing choices. However, this drama utilises realism in such an effective and compelling manner that it added to the show's intensity and depth, rather than detracting from it. The realistic portrayal of its themes and characters gave the story a grounding in reality that made it all the more engaging. This drama has proven to be an exceptional watch, skillfully blending stellar acting, suspenseful storytelling, and a thought-provoking use of realism.

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"If you come for the king, you'd best come to win." - Machiavelli, from "The Prince."

A brief summary of Niccolo Machiavelli's "The Prince" might be... The aims of princes – such as glory and survival – that can justify the use of immoral means to achieve those ends, that's what encapsulated the character Park Joon Mo for me in The Worst of Evil.

Gritty, Dark and Bloody beautiful with soul to it. That is the essence of this series for me, what at first sight seemed interesting quickly turned to something i regret finishing. All the actors hired for these roles were top-notch, perfect. The story? Has you by the throat and when you think its loosening the grip it has on you.. It's over. With outstanding cinematography, music that fits the setting and time, this K-noir will thoroughly impress you.

Can the story be predictable at times ? Yes. But let hat not stop you from immersing yourself into it and by the end you'll be hurt by the decisions these characters take, althought the title gives it away. It's really "The Worst of Evil".

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The alternate ending i wanted

After everything completed junmo divorce his wife and left the police job and went to hong kong to free of everything. There he meets bibi coincidentally and a conversation happens that goes like this....
Bibi: are you here to arrest me..?
Junmo: (takes out the cigarette and lights) i stopped working for police.
Bibi: although you betrayed everyone...i believe you.so why did u leave...i thought the department will give you promotion and you will be happy with your wife
Junmo: the job made me lose a lot of things and wife...haa i think i lost her when i started going undercover.
Bibi: so why did you come to me..?
Junmo: to say thank you and sorry...thank you for loving me even after knowing me...sorry for betraying you...
Bibi: so since you said what you want ...do you leave...
Junmo: i was planning to leave after see you live happily but even you have everything and being free ypu are not happy...why?
Bibi: you want to make me happy....then be with me. I am not a stupid person i know even after everything, you tried to protect me and jincheol. Will you continue to be my side and protect me...?
Junmo: if i want to leave will you let me go..?
Bibi: i would but i don't want to
Junmo:(smiling ) looks like i don't have any choice. Lets repent what we did and enjoy what we can.

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Mission is the worst of evil

This is one of the best noir dramas ever I have watched till now ,cast, acting, cinematography,plot and fights are phenomenal..every episode is highlight ....
Reasons to watch this drama
Reason 1 :- story and nerve wrenching tension in between episodes
Reason 2 :-ji chang wook ,wi ha Joon ,Bibi and imsemi acting..here I have to give more credits to chang wook ...god he is insane his acting is on top notch
Reason 3 :- becoming evil man to be part of evil team to win over the evil practices ...
4th reason:- the bloody fight scene in episode 9,chang wook shown his 15yrs acting career in this fight ,his eyes while fighting, god!!his eyes are insane i gone crazy ...
Reason 5 :- illegal relationships though the chemistry is on fire
Reason 6 :- u r not going to get out that drama mood for 1 week
Reason 7 :-this is one of the realistic drama with real ending..all the characters have grey traits by proving no human is perfect..

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Outstanding

The Worst of Evil is an outstanding Kdrama, and not just in the noir genre. It is a fascinating story with captivating characters, stellar acting, great action sequences, THAT KISS, a touch of classic tragedy and a real departure from simplistic black-and-white storytelling. Very few of the characters in this drama are actually good, some are very very bad, and most of them fall somewhere in between.

The intriguing plot revolves around our policeman hero who goes undercover, partially to impress his wife’s family who think she married the wrong guy, and ends up working for his wife’s ex-boyfriend who is now a gangster and decidedly not a good person - though we forget that pretty quickly thanks to his charisma. The wife, anxious to help, gets involved with her ex, while our hero catches the fancy of a drug lord’s daughter, and is torn between real affection for the girl and loyalty to his wife. This is where the element of a classic tragedy comes into play. The wife only gets involved to help her husband, who only got involved in the first place to get her family off her back, and in a bitter case of irony, that is what destroys their marriage in the end.

The characters are so well written that I found myself rooting for the bad guys on numerous occasions. When their bag of drugs is stolen, my first thought was Oh No! before catching myself. These people make a living off the misery of others, but we don’t really care, do we, since many of the “bad” characters are really charming or have redeeming qualities. The drug lord’s daughter easily could have been a cliched figure, but she is ultimately just a girl unloved by her father, who’s a constant threat in the background, with her bodyguard / replacement father figure the only person she trusts until she meets our hero. And while not all if the gangsters are really bad, many of the “good guys" are not good at all. There is so much corruption and blind ambition displayed by some of the policemen that it is clear that the line between good and evil blurred a long time ago.

I can highly recommend this show to anyone who enjoys the crime & mystery genre, great storytelling, or just something very far removed from the bubbly secretary and chaebol heir type of stories (though I quite enjoy these stories too). My one and only point of criticism was actually the wife’s character. Not that she hooked up with her ex, because she had a good reason. No, I thought she is way too passive during the big fight, especially as a trained policewoman. Generally speaking, nothing riles me up more than the female character just standing by while her boyfriend gets beaten up, or falling over in a dead swoon as he comes to her rescue. This is a recurring theme in Kdramas, Hollywood movies, fairytales and just about everywhere else, and it’s bloody annoying. Other than that, this drama was a perfect 10.

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Amazing until 9-10

until episode 10 they built the tension but Very poor acting by both lead actors

Ending was total let down
You built everything for end and then nothing really happened
Director wasn't able to fit all that in 12 episodes
There were no believable emotion in whole show
until Episode 10 Lee hayrun was noticing tension between Cop couple but after 10 Director decide to make her stupid fangirl who already noticed cop couple but suddenly she is too deep in love with Ji chang Wook
ji chang wook shows no emotion for Miss Lee at all and she wasn't able to notice anything after episode 10
Junmo was free to kill and former cop they don't even was able to catch

Whole show was about catching drug gang boss but our Murderer Cop Ji Chang Wook let him go
he kill an innocent investigator,
But since his wife still love her criminal lover he let him run away what nonsense logic is that
that wife cheat on her husband with a criminal in front of him by using work as excuse
his boss himself look like a gang leader then police, Acting level of Ji Chang Wook in this show drop to -99 {negative}

At the end they are back normal walking in there home after his cop wife told him that she will always love that criminal guy and he is her compromise who she can't divorce or leave for a criminal because it will taint her Cop family
Junmo shot a man who was about to shot himself, in both situation other person died
but junmo wanted credit for his second murder and after that what is left of his marriage ?
Junmo killed his wife's first love she still love and cry for in front of her husband

I give 4/10 for those 10 episodes in which this drama was logical, but at the end just throw the logic out

It was first time i see ji chang wook being this Lazy in his acting,
K2 was better and Empress Ki was the best of Ji chang Wook after that its all went downhill in his acting and choice of scripts.

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One of the masterpiece series of korean dramas

It's one of a masterpiece. The plot and the main lead actors acting is the strength of the drama. The main male lead actor, ji chung wook just nailed it, his acting was at It's peak! One of his look with bloodshed was terrifying. And fight scenes are awsome. There is a fight scene were thr other gang attack 2nd lead's gang, then the two main lead actors fights back as their last fight..it was hell like fight. Brotherhood genre is the mai strength to the plot. But there is a scene which felt awkward, which is the main actress and 2nd lead's kiss scene. It felt like awkward, also the main lead's (ji chung wook) and other mafia girl's kiss scene. They were essential for the drama, they can't exclude it. But it really felt awkward watching it. Because they have already married to eachother(ji chung wook and main actress). In the end It's emotional. But i think that's better. It's like a happy ending kind of a feel.. Really that's the better end for the main leads.

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excellent men, women a disaster

SPOILER WARNING UNTIL THE LAST SCENE

SPOILERS

SPOILERS



The series is really good and deserves a second viewing (I always only watch them once anyway). However, be prepared for a lot of violence, sometimes even exaggerated. The actors are all very good. The male characters were masterfully drawn, all of them, unlike the female ones who are a disaster. There are very few flaws in the plot (including the disappearance of his father into thin air). Very little waste of time and unnecessary turns to lengthen the broth. Emotionally it is engaging, even if for those who have already seen the films from which it draws inspiration, they are emotions already experienced at a different qualitative level [“Donnie Brasco” by Mike Newell from 1997, with Johnny Depp and Al Pacino; “Infernal Affairs” by Andrew Lau and Alan Mak from 2002, with Tony Leung and Eric Tsang; “The Departed” by Martin Scorsese from 2006, with Leonardo DiCaprio and Jack Nicholson]. In any case, let's say that the theme of betrayed trust and the bad guy who trusts the good guy, who is instead deceiving him, is conveyed very well, or rather doubled by the fact that Eui Jeong also comes into play. So a round of applause to the directors, the screenwriter and the actors.

I really compliment the utent DramaAjumma on the parallel between Gi Cheul and Jay Gatsby, which I totally approve of. She were also very astute in observing that the same woman (Eui Jeong/Daisy Fay) is the driving force behind both men's ambition to achieve high social position. As well as the user @oppa_, who noted that Hae Ryun had very well noticed that there was tension between Jun Mo and Eui Jeong, but this crumb of the story was dropped without giving it any follow-up. Actually, Gi Cheul had noticed it for a moment too.

However, there are wrong elements in the series, even if we leave aside the imaginative way in which an undercover investigation was made, with the absurd involvement of the wife etc. I think Seok Do Hyung's murder scene was rendered in a botched and unbelievable way. A seasoned cop who can be disarmed and fooled so easily? And Jun Mo, why the hell did not he just arrest Seo, given the situation? Seo gave him the gun and he, instead of taking it and shooting him, left it in his hand. Another inconceivable scene is when Jun Mo arrests Gi Cheul, insults him heavily (for no apparent reason) and then incredibly allows him to escape. After working for months, risking his life and taking other's life, precisely for the purpose of arresting Gi Cheul, he lets him go, also putting his wife in danger.

I was extremely impressed by Choi Jeong Bae (the actor Lim Seong Jae is phenomenal). He was right about everything and he was the one who was pushed into the corner the most until he was removed, even though he was probably the most faithful. He is the only one who understood from the beginning that Jun Mo and Eui Jeong both had something wrong; if Gi Cheul had listened to his intuition about them from the beginning, he wouldn't have lost everything. Although Jeong Bae stole from Gi Cheul, his loyalty was far greater than everyone else's, so he is another character who has great ambivalence. Honestly, it is not clear to me why Seo massacres him. He is also the one who finally realizes that Gi Cheul is trying to screw the whole team and abandon the drug dealing. I did not quite understand whether the drugs sold by Jeong bae were stolen from Gi Cheul or the Japanese, in which case he would be the cause of all Gi Cheul's troubles with the Japanese. I was a little perplexed in the scene where he punctures the tire... it is not clear whether he is involved or not in what happens that evening, maybe it is a plot hole.

The forgettable part of the series are the two female characters: the girl is ridiculous and an unlikely drug trafficker, the wife is a vapid deadcat. The actress Im Se Mi must have worked hard to act so expressionlessly, to comply with a script completely devoid of romantic emotions. The female roles and relationships in the three couples had to be left to a female hand. The choice not to show the slightest intimacy between any of them makes any emotion impermissible; where was the smile and joy of being together, typical of lovers? Nothing justifies Jun Mo risking the entire operation to warn Hae Ryun that the Chinese police were about to raid his hideout and leaving her free to continue her crime somewhere else. There is not a single scene from which we understand that Hae Ryun is so in love with him that she betrays her father and gives up her business that allows her to lead the life of a billionaire. The two characters never exchange a look of real complicity or affection. The same goes for Eui Jeong's alleged falling in love, instead she has shown herself to be constantly worried about the safety of her husband: we have never seen Eui Jeong happy in Gi Cheul's arms. Should dating her husband and putting the necklace in plain sight suggest that she is in love with Gi Cheul? Even at the last moment, when she kneels next to the dying Gi Cheul, she does nothing different than anyone with any knowledge of the wounded man would have done.

So it is all assumed, without the effort of any scene in the script showing how the feelings of these four people are growing; everything is taken for granted, including the fact that Jun Mo "understood" that his wife actually no longer loved him, as the ending suggests.

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