The Killer's Shopping Mall (2024)

Short and Spicy drama

This drama is really short and spicy...
I started watching just because I was bore but turns out to be one of the amazing dramas I have seen.
From start to end there wasn't a single lag. I just faced issue with few parts where the scenes where dark but the story kept me waiting...
As soon as 1 episode is done I started seeing the next one
The ending was clearly unpredictable. I had a gut feeling about it then I also felt like how can it be but boom it happened . The one who watched will understand this and the one didn't watch is mostly eager to know.
So watch it asap...
And I hope there is a second part of it.
It is more than what I expected when I first came across the drama's name. I thought it would be something so funny but still very interesting one...

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action, action everywhere

Ok, I had ups and downs with this one, the beginning was very intriguing and while we were getting more informations it got more and more interesting, however, there was some boring parts.
The story is basically tell in three time lines, Jinman past, Jian past and present. It was told in a flashback format, so it started with the present and the characters past were presented as memories, and I didn't think it worked so well.
I understand the suspenseful intention with using flashbacks, but it felt like stoping the whole story to tell us something that we should know, but we don't yet. I believe that the show would work better if it followed the time line.
But it was great the same way, I just LOVED the uncle niece relationship, they were amazing, as well as the support characters. And that ending... I WAS SO FKN COOL, I was kinda expecting him to come back but trying to not put my hopes too up, AND HE'S BACK!! I really hope that'll be a second season.

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Just me and my totally normal uncle

A very tightly written and directed drama, full of action and suspense, with a hint of found family...and actual family. I'm not really gonna go into the plot because I think you just have to see how everything unfolds for yourself. Down below is everything I liked and likes less.

Why this is one of the best dramas of the past few years:
- A very tightly written plot, which keeps the suspense through-out the show. The drama kept me engaged from start to end, no unnecessary scenes or side-plots. Everything was directly connected to the main plot. The drama is also well paced, which is a big beef I have with Korean dramas in general.
- Actually interesting action scenes.
- Yes, the show is violent and I had to turn my head a few times. However, I didn't find the gore/violence excessive or for chock value. There where a few scenes where they decided not to show it, and these turned out to be some of the most powerful scenes (SLIGHT SPOILER: the scene with the women in the cell, and us just seeing Jinman's is the prime example of this)
- Acting was very good. I'm was very impressed by Lee Dongwook in this, best role I've seen him in and makes me wanna go back to some of his earlier dramas.
- Good use of sound affects and score, which is always critical to a suspense thriller.
- Loved the use of space. I felt like i was in there with them. I usually don't like when movies and shows only takes place in one place. Here though, the house just felt so big, yet intimate. Very well done. I also feel like the flashback scenes helped with this.
- PASIN!


Why it's not a 10/10 for me:
- I would say that the first half is slightly better than the second half. Generally pretty even though.
- Jian as the main character does a serviceable job, I didn't dislike her by any means, however i felt that her development through-out the show was non-existing. She was presented in the beginning as a young, yet street-smart character women but somehow that didn't come through later in the show. Maybe this was just my personal expectations of her as a character, and maybe we will see more of this in a future season.
- Super small point, but something I though about when watching, was how the episodes was weirdly cut off.
- More off a note than a personal critic, but the show ends with a lot of open-endings and questions. The reason why this doesn't bother me though, is because the talks of a second season. If you ask me, they very clearly had a second season in mind when making this show. However, I can see how some people found this frustrating, especially when it first aired.

To conclude, this is a very well made drama that will keep you glued to the tv for the entire runtime. It does have a few flaws as mentioned above and the show do lack an emotional punch that I would have liked, even though that is usually very difficult to achieve in this sort of drama with this few episodes. A very strong 9/10 for me!

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Killer economics

There are many kdramas that try to be cool and gritty with often cringy results, but A Shop for Killers is the rare one that has done it. The standout of the show is Lee Dong Wook as the stoic but softie at heart Jung Jin Man. We learn who he is alongside his clueless but quick thinking niece Jung Ji Ahn, picking up new information while trying to survive the hordes of professional mercenaries. I like that 7 year old Jung Ji Ahn wasn't a sitting duck and had excellent assassin-dar, learning from her mistake of walking towards the strange man that broke into her house. As soon as she went to hide in the morgue, I just knew she was going to have to go through the additional trauma of hiding with one of her murdered parent's corpse.

Jin Man's morality is firmly in the grey and it's so fascinating to see how the show can keep navigating it. He's not okay with murdering civilians, particularly the murder of sex trafficking victims that his mercenary cohorts either perpetuated or enabled, but his market is definitely sells weapons to terrible people. It's so ridiculous of Babylon to go after him who just wants to quietly be with his family, instead of Bale who is a trigger happy psycho who goes off mission to commit atrocities that gets the local government's attention. Jin Man saves Min Hye who the only trafficking victim that survived and becomes part of his inner circle, but she has never met Ji Ahn and needed to scan her green code to even be sure who she is. Both ladies are trained by Pasin, another former mercenary, who turns talent into sharpened skill. Ji Ahn has been calling her unnie, but it should really be sunbae.

I cheered so hard when it's revealed at the end that Jung Jin Man faked his death, because of course he did! Towards the end, it just felt like a waste Jin Man was dead, but the show didn't let that happen, good for them. Although the season was enjoyable, the conclusion or any continuation without him felt less satisfying without him because he was the heart of the show. All the best parts revolve around Jung Jin Man, either it's his relationship with his niece, protecting her and giving her as regular a childhood as possible in their situation while training her on the sly without her even knowing she's learning integral survival knowledge or the glimpses of his friendships and business partners. I hope if there is a season 2, we could see more of his business acumen because he set up a very intricate black market shopping mall for professional killers. I want to see how he set up his business and how he runs it. I could see how the drama could show us through him finally properly training Ji Ahn to be the successor to the bloody family business.

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I wish it was better.

I really wanted to love Love this series but it was just meh for me. It was good though, if that makes any sense.

I probably shouldn't have watched it on Disney+ because there was more ad time than there was actual show and the breaks, especially during crucial times, was really aggravating. So I will no longer watch any series on Disney+. The ads made it seem like it was dragging on and on.

The fight scenes were great and everyone was interesting but it just seemed anticlimactic. Every time something happened, a ad or a cut scene to the past.

I don't understand Kdramas obsession with let the one who should have been shot, live to come after you again. I feel like Babylon knew they had a bunch of pyscho on their payroll and then let them run around free to kill. None of it actually made sense to me.

There were so many unanswered questions. I am so confused by the purpose of this series.

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A Glimpse of what the Shop can offer

Kinda late, but i finally had the time to watch it and i must say, it was good.

The story in the beginning was action-packed, as usual in these types of series where they drop you off in the middle of the action in the story to hook you and i don't mind it since it delivered, then backstory. I thought they'll gonna drop all the backstory at once, then continue where we left off, but nope. The way they did it is they'll only bring up a backstory when a present scene needed a context on how it led to that point and i don't know how, but it worked, it didn't really hurt the pacing of the story nor my experience since they took their time to explain things, though, at the last 3 episodes, it slowly got to me a little bit because they tied all the timeline together and i was just waiting when are they gonna go back to the action. This season is mostly a build and just a taste of what the story can offer because the backstory mostly ate all the screen time. In the back of my mind i kinda want this drama and 'Kill Bok Soon' to diverge, how hype would that be, both dramas are very similar, the difference is just the other is a movie.

The cinematography is cool as always and the action. The editing near the end annoyed the shit out of me because they chopped the scenes a lot, they don't stay in a certain part that long and they kept using the fade-to-black transition and it was so long as well, oh my god! So i guess that's my only minor critique of this show.

The characters are really good, they're all well written down to the side characters. The FL's backstory was really sad along with ML because they are tied and i really loved their relationship dynamic during the backstory, it's so wholesome. I like how they wrote FL because she isn't just this strong character on the outside just because she's the niece of ML, she actually had to work her way up, and overcome her trauma to at least become able to hold her ground, she isn't perfectly strong yet like her uncle, she still cries gets nervous and gets helped in some situation and that's what makes her a good character. FL's actress is so cute and pretty tho... it's my first time seeing her and she looks like Adora in some angle. ML, we didn't get to spend time with him in the present, we mostly got it in the backstory and it was still good by how he was built up. He was this mysterious uncle, like FL said she lived with him for 10 years, but it was almost like she didn't know anything aside from he was her uncle until he died and she found out her uncle was involved in some shady underground business and that how she got caught up in this mess. I must say Lee Dong Wook is so badass here, i want more of this kind of project please and i noticed how he talks here, it's so asmr coded, ugh!!! Not to spoil anything, his character was built up to be this perfect killer so it's very obvious to me that there's gonna be some twist to him somewhere along the series if not then maybe in season 2, judging how he analyzed the blackmail.

Another thing i appreciated and a bit of cleanse to my pallete because chinese dramas couldn't even do this one minor detail, is their foreign characters. Because in this drama foreign characters are actually speaking the language of the characters that they are portraying, yes oh my god!!! It reminded me again that "Oh yeah, koreans never miss every minor detail in their media". Whenever you have a foreign character in your show it should be obvious that they should be speaking their mother tongue to make it convincing, i don't care how broken it is or even if you butcher the language, just do it, because the viewers will appreciate it... some of course because some will not because of the language butchering. Obviously, the actors are korean, i don't know about the thai one because he looks convincing and from the way he speaks as well, i probably have to look it up. Anyway, i appreciate the effort they made to make the foreign characters speak a foreign language.

Overall, very good action series. Highly recommend it, can't wait for season 2.

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WOW

This was fantastic!! There were of course scenes that I thought wasn't necessary
and didn't need to be repeated over and over again but this is a must watch. I'm disappointed
that the mute guy didn't make it. I was hoping that he just lost an arm and that was it and was
hoping that he was gonna pop up in the final episode. The way Uncle on the sneak trained her
for what was to come was I must say brilliant. I guess it wasn't fitting for us to get a hug with her seeing him turn up alive but I was glad that he was alive at the end but there are
things that wasn't tied up so I hope we get a second season. It looks like Pasin got So Min Hye out
and got her some help for her wounds so if there's a second season I hope to see the both of them as well.
Lee Dong Wook...there's not much to say except he's great in everything. Kim Hye Joon did a great job in the role of the niece but her character did more than one stupid thing but the character was a bad ass.
This was excellent.

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GREAT PLOT, CAST, ACTION SCENES, EVERYTHING! Those who loved "Moving (2023)", this is PERFECT!

Next time you feel in a mood for crime/thriller- look no further, this is IT.
I finished this series in one sitting, it was way too captivating! I NEED MORE!

Tough female lead, fantastic acting by everyone, the CAST ✨✨ I found myself falling in love with a lot of new actors <3
It's not boring - not one bit. The start itself is catchy, no filler episodes or scenes at all. A short, 8 ep drama that had me saying "Oh crap what do we do now" way more times than I thought. The story is explained in a present-flashback-present format, which I loved. There's not a LOTTTT of gore, as compared to other "kill/crime" stuff (meaning you don't get to see a whole lotta blood) but there are a lot of corpses involved. Military/mercenary elements, old gang getting back together, etc. etc.
Last time I felt so good after watching a drama of this genre was just afer I finished Moving - whomever has seen it would def agree that it was a blockbluster of a show. Similar to that, here the stoy isn't focusing on the kid(s), it's about the adults and their past and what they hid from the kid about their job. This one doesn't have any romance though.

I just can't keep my excitement and stuff under control anymore SHHSHLGJGSAAHHHHHHH
PARK JEONG WOO!!!!
JEONG I HUN!!! SARANGHAEEOO!!!
ANDDDDDDDDDDD ofc, our dear Grim Reaper ✨✨✨✨✨ Amazing as always

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Perfeito...

Comecei a ver esse drama ainda enquanto estava lançando, mas tive que parar por alguns motivos chamado FALTA DE TEMPO. E por causa disso a unica coisa que me passa pela cabeça é PQ EU N ARRUMEI TEMPO PRA ASSISTIR ANTES ESSA OBRA DE ARTE DE DRAMA?!
Agora passando o surto, o que eu gostaria de comentar sobre A shop for killers é que faz muito tempo que não assisto um drama tão bem escrito, dirigido e encenado como este. Que saudades de ver uma obra de arte como essa. Cada episodio construí um contexto novo pra historia principal que é surreal, não tem vc chegar no ultimo episodio sentindo empatia pela metade dos personagens desse drama, e a outra metade ranço.
A fotografia utilizada fez também que as cenas passassem perfeitamente os sentimentos dos personagens, junto a coloração em alguns pontos específicos. Apenas um dos melhores dramas em que ja assisti dos últimos tempos.

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Lee dong min is alive and im 100 percent sure

Like think about it. A man that worked for mercenaries for years is a good planner and a good fighter is clever and also owns a weapon shop without anyone knowing his whole life believed that jian was kidnapped and even he did lets just suppose he did do you really think he believed when bae said that they will release jian after he commits suicide. Like come on. I want him alove for sure and another fact is to kill bale he is suppose to be alive i think he is alive and that is going to be the plot twist when everyone thought that he died he actually didn’t and think the only call he made before he died was to pasin no on else so why did minhye said that he asked her to come. And the smirk when he called pasin and the way he only said that "pasin you dint have to pay me back" aahhahahhhhh i really hope he is alive.

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Soo twisted yet oh soo good!!

So i love lee dong wook.. (given)

But this review is not about him.

This series kept me on my tippy toes.. The plot was superbly interesting..

The cast was likeable.
Although i do not envy jian at all..
But the actress who played ji an.. Played her role soo well.. That you want to root for her.

And the supporting cast was soo good as well i mean (minhye, pasin and brother.)
That you want them all to live until the end..

Thank God this show has confirmed season 2.
Because the only thing i did not like about it..

Is that its too short.
There are still a lot of unfinished business.


Love it love it!

Cant wait for season 2 😁

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