Disney+ K-drama The Worst of Evil: Ji Chang-wook, Wi Ha-joon rule with their fists in brutal and immersive gangster saga
- Ji plays a cop undercover in a crime gang and Wi the gang boss in this K-drama. Im Se-mi, wife of the first and old flame of the second, is the love interest
- The series is well produced and the opening few episodes are terrific, even if we’ve seen this kind of story many times before. But can it keep on delivering?
Lead cast: Ji Chang-wook, Wi Ha-joon, Im Se-mi
Set in the mid-1990s, this is an age-old story of a cop going undercover to infiltrate a crime organisation, then rising up its ranks as he tries to take it down from the inside. But the higher up he goes, the closer he gets to its charismatic boss, and thus a macho bromance is born which threatens to split his loyalties.
The most famous Korean example of this often-told tale is the gangster film New World, and it should come as no surprise that The Worst of Evil so clearly takes after it, since both were made by powerhouse production company Sanai Pictures.
Ji plays Park Jun-mo, a rural detective looked down upon by the male members of the police family he has married into; his wife is Yu Eui-jeong (Im Se-mi), a narcotics officer in Seoul.
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Owing to his father’s history with drugs, Jun-mo has consistently been passed over for promotion, but one day his close friend on the force approaches him with an opportunity to secure that coveted jump up the ladder.
He is asked to go undercover and find a way into the Gangnam Union, the crime syndicate run by Jung Gi-cheol (Wi), who is suspected of distributing methamphetamine in Seoul.
Junmo poses as the cousin of Gi-cheol’s slain right-hand man and, after very aggressively confronting the Union as he pretends to search for his cousin’s killer, and knocking some of its members down, he secures an invitation to join.
Gi-cheol is a native of Gangnam, the Seoul district from which the Union takes its name, who starts out as a DJ before joining a gang. It doesn’t take long for his Gangnam Union, which is made up of his high-school buddies, to take over. This makes them a target for old school gangsters in Busan.
The Worst of Evil is a very well produced series made by people who are well versed in big-screen thrills. This includes co-director Han Dong-wook, who made the Sanai-produced gangster romance Man in Love, and writer Jang Min-suk, known for Secret Reunion.
In transferring these codes to the small screen and different audiences, the only concession is the addition of Eui-jeong as a third female lead, although for the moment she hasn’t been terribly well integrated.
To Jun-mo’s horror, he quickly discovers that Gi-cheol and Eui-jeong knew each other as teenagers. Not only that, she is the gang boss’ first love and a chance encounter between them appears to reawaken something inside Gi-cheol.
Eui-jeong is clearly being set up to play a larger role later on in the season, but will that stretch beyond being the prize in a contentious love triangle between Jun-mo and Gi-cheol?
The Worst of Evil makes little effort to deviate from tried-and-true techniques beyond that, but when they are executed as effectively as this it’s hard to be too finicky about the show’s lack of originality.
The magnetic Wi makes Gi-cheol a presence on screen, but by contrast his character feels a touch underwritten. We’re asked to accept that this young man has quickly risen to his rank without seeing too much evidence of what makes him such a feared gangster.
After three terrific opening episodes, the question for The Worst of Evil is how much runway has it left for itself? The series runs the risk of running out of gangster clichés fairly soon unless it can dig a little deeper and show us something new.
The Worst of Evil is streaming on Disney+.
