Lead cast: Lee Dong-wook, Kim Hye-jun, Seo Hyun-woo
He plays Jeong Jinman, a man leading an unassuming life in the countryside selling agricultural hosepipes … or is he? Playing his niece Jeong Jian, who comes to live with him after the sudden death of her parents – during her grandmother’s funeral of all places – is Kingdom actress Kim Hye-jun.
Jian’s woes do not stop there as she suits up for yet another funeral at the show’s outset – this time for none other than her taciturn uncle Jinman. The police have written the death off as a suicide but, given the gaping stab wound in his neck, Jian is far from convinced.
It is a daring gambit to kill off your star actor in the first couple of scenes, but for the many Lee Dong-wook fans out there, fear not – this is not a show that starts at the beginning.
A Shop for Killers is based on the webtoon The Killer’s Shopping Mall by Kang Ji-young, who previously wrote the similarly-themed The Killer’s Shopping List, which was also adapted into a K-drama in 2022.
12 of the best new Korean drama series to watch in January 2024
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Bringing the webtoon to the screen is Lee Kwon, director of impressive genre films such as My Ordinary Love Story and Door Lock as well as the series Save Me 2. He also shares the writing credit with Ji Ho-jin.
Lee’s facility with set pieces, which is evident across his film work, is put to great use as soon as the show kicks off.
In a tense, cool and invigorating cold open, we are first introduced to Jian, cowering in the kitchen of her uncle’s simple rural home while bullets whizz by her cheek, courtesy of maniacal nearby sharpshooter Lee Sung-zo (Seo Hyun-woo, Flower of Evil), one of several unsavoury and well-armed characters currently making a beeline for the house.
We get our first look at Lee’s uncle during a brief flashback as a recollection pops into Jian’s mind while she is under fire. Watching an action movie in the same living room, Jinman shows Jian how important blind spots are in a gunfight.
Using this piece of wisdom and her acumen, she performs a daring move and retrieves a hidden sniper rifle of her own as the thrilling flash forward reaches its culmination – for now.
Director Lee excels in the show’s many set pieces, which at times call to mind David Fincher, thanks in part to propulsive music from composer Primary and slinky camerawork that occasionally moves through props.
Where A Shop for Killers struggles in its opening pair of episodes – out of a total of eight this season – is in its narrative structure and pacing. The show is neatly outlined but slow around the edges.
The early reveals lose much of their impact as viewers starting the series will likely already be a few steps ahead of Jian.
We know that her uncle was an arms dealer – a fact that Jian only learns after Jinman’s funeral, alongside that there is a whopping 18.7 billion won (US$14 million) in his bank account. We have also pieced together that the various and sudden misfortunes of her life are likely connected to his line of work.
Unlike traditional K-dramas which would normally speed through this kind of exposition, A Shop for Killers takes its time with its drip feed of information, using the time as a way to get to know Jian, expand the mystery surrounding Jinman and allow us to sync with the show’s rhythm.
It is a refreshing approach and there are choice scenes throughout – like the dark character-building moment where young Jian hides from an attacker by hiding with her mother’s corpse in a morgue locker – but the show spends perhaps a little too much time focusing on mood and not enough on plot.
By the end of the second episode, we have not quite caught up with the cold open yet and nothing has happened that was not obvious from the trailer.
However, given the care put into the show’s set pieces and atmosphere, as well as the focused performances of the leads, this seems like an acceptable trade-off for now and it bodes well for what is to come, as from here on out, the story should begin to offer us some real surprises.
A Shop for Killers is streaming on Disney+.