Another trailer — in addition to a new poster and stills — have recently dropped for Disney+’s The Worst of Evil, and we get our longest and most in-depth look yet at the world of our crime-action drama. Starring Ji Chang-wook (If You Wish Upon Me) and Wie Ha-joon (Little Women), the drama promises an intense tale filled with violence, turn-coating, moral dilemmas, obsessive love, cigarettes, and all the sorts of things that make an exciting crime noir.
If you’ve been following the drama’s promotional cycle as closely as I have, you know that Ji Chang-wook is playing Park Joon-mo, an undercover cop in the 1990s tasked with infiltrating Gangnam’s infamous drug syndicate. We open with our hero’s fierceness on full display, while in voiceover we hear he’s the kind of guy who doesn’t let go once he bites. Hmm, seems perfect for a life-threatening deep cover operation, don’t you think?
The teaser advances to the crime syndicate our hero will be infiltrating, and we get our first look at mob boss Jung Ki-chul (Wie Ha-joon). This soon leads to the two interacting as Joon-mo joins the gang, and I’d be lying if I said this drama doesn’t look like lots of suspenseful conversations with hard-set stares, punctuated by excessive fight sequences. (Perfect!)
But it is also looking like The Worst of Evil has a lot of interesting and complex character relationships as well — and really, that’s the lure of this entire setup, because a crime noir without character development is just Ji Chang-wook being awesome and throwing punches. And while that’s most welcome, a deeper darker story is even more desirable.
Not only do we get a look at the complicated trust/mistrust between our two heroes in the new teaser, but we also see the women involved as well. Im Se-mi (Duty After School) plays Joon-mo’s wife and fellow cop Yoo Eui-jung. As we see, she gets pulled into the operation as well — and it turns out she also has ties to Ki-chul in the past. (Hint: Can you see his heart eyes in the stills below?) Furthermore, there’s trafficker Hae-ryun (Bibi in her drama debut), who arrives in Seoul but finds her goals complicated by Joon-mo.
While the teaser, in my opinion, shows far too much of what we’re going to get over the 12-episode drama, I like what I see and it sets the stage for an intense ride to come. Most importantly, I stick by my previous desperate wish pronouncement that what we’re getting here is going to be akin to Heartless City. Bring on the tenuous relationships and confused loyalties, please!
Written by Jang Min-seok (Secret Reunion) and directed by Han Dong-wook (Man in Love) and Park Geun-beom, The Worst of Evil premieres its first three episodes on September 27 on Disney+ and Hulu.
