If you wondering how an ordinary girl life can turned 180 degree when she suddenly meet a lot of hitman full of guns who decided to kill her and she needs to deal with it, you come to the right series. Welcome!
My first intention to this series of course…. not for the plot, but for Lee Dong Wook^^. Turned out it’s quite a good series. It’s not a romance drama. It’s pure an action, mystery, and thriller genre. It’s also can be categorized as a family drama. This series talking about relationship between a girl and her mysterious uncle as her only family who still alive. Again, this is one of the series I never intend to watch and start it with zero expectation. Turned out it’s a really fun and quite addicting drama. Like I said, I purely play this series and tried to watch it because I see Lee Dong Wook in this series in every social media platform without me knowing what the drama context about. I just know a little after watching the clips that this series tell a story about Lee Dong Wook character, a mysterious uncle who who has niece and doing the action scene here and there.
Short story this is a story about Jeong Ji An (Kim Hye Jun), a girl who left alone by his parents when she was a little kid. Some rumors said that her mother was killed by her father because she get caught cheating and after that her father commit suicide. Her uncle, Jeong Jin Man (Lee Dong Wook) eventually took care of her until she become a grown beautiful girl when one day suddenly her uncle passed away. Little did she know, it turns out that her uncle has a mysterious shopping website. After the funeral she went to her uncle house, and right there her new adventure began. She’s slowly discover the real identity of her uncle and the mysterious shopping website he built. This series contain only 8 episodes and suited for you that doesn’t like a long story.
If you expect to see more Lee Dong Wook here, we’ll only see his appearances from his flashback in entire episodes. Even though this series indeed using flashback scenes as main story here, but the focus on the story will be more aligned to how Jeong Ji An survive from the terror and find the mysterious identity of her uncle with some help from people around his uncle’s life. So when Lee Dong Wook will showed up in the flashback? When her niece in a situation when she already cornered by the terrors and she needs advice and tips to fight them. Actually her uncle always put some advice and train her everytime he could without her realizing until it all happened. Everything that her uncle did for Ji An was for her good. It’s all proven by Ji An now that she can use that indirect ‘lesson’ to fight the bad guys and help her create a strategies to defeat the enemy.
I’m amazed by how Jeong Jin Man planted these precious little lesson as much as he can without Jeong Ji An realized. He always give her a code of something that can be useful for her in the future. Amazingly Jeong Ji An is smart and sensitive about it. For example, she needs a password to open a door and no one knows about it. But she can relate it to one scene that her uncle insist that she needs to memorize her ID number. Turned out it’s the password. She can elaborate the flashback she had into the present scene. If it’s me I don’t think I’d remember it. Just like the villain said, she is really Jeong Jin Man’s niece. The flashback scenes also will connect the dots of what’s really happened in the past that make the situation in the present really chaos not only for Jeong Jin Man, but for his family. One by one this series will let us see who Jeong Jin Man really is and who he’s work for. For me there’s a big chance to this series make it to another season. If you wondered what’s the best thing about this series, I can say there’s one thing who steals the show. It’s Min Hye. Her character really a bad ass girl. She literally steal the show with her fighting skill. It’s like I was rooting for her in entire episodes. Her action performances was a top-notch scene in this series.
At first I thought when I read that Lee Dong Wook’s character has a niece, I thought she’s a little girl. Turned out she is a grown up girl and it’s her story to fight her uncle bad guys. When I see that Kim Hye Jun is the one who played Jeong Ji An, I just know that she really suited Ji An’s character. I’ve seen her played as weird psychopath girl who chased by crazy policewoman in Inspector Koo, so of course she will suited play as a niece who have no idea about anything and suddenly chased by her uncle’s enemy so she need to pour all her skills to fight it. Well, beside Ji An there’s one character who played by another actor that his character before really attach me that makes me suspicious about him in this series. Park Ji Bin as Bae Jong Min, Ji An’s childhood friend. When I see him on the screen for the first time, the first word I said is “He is suspicious. Don’t trust by his cute and smiley face.” He was known having a pure innocent boy next door face, but deep inside he’s a little dangerous psychopath. Refer it to his series before, Blind. He really played well there and when you already see him there, you’ll have trust issue for his played character and see him smiling makes me remember of his character there. So I really having trust issue about him in this series, and is it proved or not? Please watch it ^^.
One question that filled up my mind the entire series: is he really kill himself only because of Jian’s deepfake voice that seeking for help? It’s kinda makes no sense for Jin Man, because he’s a very calculated person who prepared every probabilities that could happen in the future and sensitive about any little things and just believe the Ji An’s deepfake voice and surrender himself as long Ji An safe. He’s not that dumb right? All his actions are too cool to see him died only because of that. It’s not like he’d believe someone whom he just knew like that. We’d forced and wanted to believe (or is it just me) until the end of the series that this is all are already in Jin Man’s plan. Is it? It’s a typical drama you should watch until the really end to get all the answers above. You’ll find a little surprise but not-too-surprise because i know that this is what all the viewers want for from the first episode was playing in the background.
As a typical Disney+ original series, A Shop For Killers still become a part of them. Original series from streaming platform like to make the series end with open ending. If the series make its popularity of course next season is on the way, but if it turned out flop then it’s end. Same with this series. If it turned out flop, then this is the only ending we got. But for me personally, this series can be explore more into S2 and I really hope many viewers do. I’ll make sure to tune in if they make it the A Shop For Killers S2. There are things still need to be solved. But for me, the ending of this season still good enough because one thing that viewers really anticipated and wishes for was answered in the really end.
So in the end, just like the title it’s a story about a shop for killers. It’s about how one side still trying to protect the shop and another side trying to take over the shop once they know that the one who errands it already dead. We about to see that there’s people who thinking that killing is a fun thing to do, and find that there’s people who doesn’t want to kill people but it’s part of their job. The shop would be a win win solution for both sides so they need to give all to the limits to own this shop.
Did it work? Who wins the battle?
Though the series always give us a dark tone even my highest brightness can’t handle the dark cinematography of the series, I’d give this series 4 stars out of 5 stars ⭐️ ⭐️⭐️⭐️.
“Listen up, Jeong Ji An.”
