‘The Worst of Evil’ will Showcase Ji Chang-wook’s Hitherto Unseen Sides: Dark and Unfathomable

Ji Chang-wook draws a tad bit more when he is playing the tough cookie, and when it’s toughness in a K-drama, you can’t pass over Ji. He isn’t the highly beefed-up guy flashing firearms at the evil or bringing them down but rather a cut, a very smooth and sophisticated one at that, whose courage and razor-sharp wit work in favor of his action when dealing with the vile. What marks Ji as an alluring action hero is his all-encompassing sense of self. Now mix that with righteousness and a more savage attitude—that’s Ji’s Park Joon-mo for you from The Worst of Evil, with the actor showcasing his hitherto unseen sides: dark and unfathomable.

In the teaser trailer for the soon-to-be-released action crime drama, Joon-mo gets his hands dirty to foil a crime. The clip opens with him asking Wi Ha-joon (playing the kingpin of a crime syndicate), “Are you Jung Gi-chul?” and the scene swiftly cuts to a close of the good and bad face-to-face—an inimitable Joon-mo challenging the roguish Gi-chul, his countenance dripping horrid villainy. Then there’s a succession of scenes that tease what’s ahead. In the 1990s, Gangnam, The Worst of Evil, lays out a clandestine mission whereby police officer Jun-mo infiltrates Gi-chul’s gang, running an illegal narcotics trade between Korea, China, and Japan.

The adrenaline-fueled video takes us inside the action-packed events explosive with threats, action, and narrative twists culminating in an individual crime story. It’s a roller coaster of complexity and complex emotions, from the impressively dynamic opening to the darker closing sequence. More precisely, a wreck-ball, as it suggests Joon-mo has his resilience up against Gi-chul’s hegemony through what would eventually escalate into a violent frenzy. Enmeshed in it are Yoo Eui-jung (Im Se-mi), Joon-mo’s wife, a narcotics officer, and Hae-ryeon (Bibi), a drug supplier who flies to Korea for business dealings with Gi-chul.

In the crime-action genre, The Worst of Evil allegedly proposes a novelty, and director Han Dong-wook asserts that it also features Ji in an entirely new light—his talent for a darker role rather effectively. I imagine Ji’s desire for more meaty roles is what propels him to engage in a character like this. I am so looking forward to seeing him burst onto the scene with all of his splendor. September 27 marks the release of The Worst of Evil on Disney+.