What I liked most was the brotherhood between the “bad guys” and how all of them showed a range of emotions and were morally grey. I like morally grey characters so I felt they were written well, however I can’t say the same for the female lead. She was given the shorter end of the stick: the typical doesn’t know how to solve a single thing kinda detective we find in crime and sci-fi series/movies. Her dialogues and how other characters never took her seriously reeked of misogyny on the director's part. However, the actress was also at fault, although she was given very little to contribute she could have managed had she acted well; it was genuinely so frustrating to see her have one expression in every situation. Also, her dialogues were filled with recurring questions or preachy monologues so her monotonous delivery made them even more boring. Except this flaw, others would be the sometimes makjang-type feel where the fight scenes also felt a little dramatic and the beast/animal metaphors they inserted in every dialogue failed to bring in the poetic feel of the metaphors as they lost meaning over repeated usage. There were a few half-baked plot points and rushed explanations to some of the crimes but overall the loopholes were negligible.

The most memorable characters are definitely of Jung Tae Soo and Park Ung Cheol. The actors did a great job at the fight scenes as well as the emotional scenes. Props to Ma Dong Seok for even being funny on top of all that. He is the one I found myself rooting for the most. Kim Tae Hoon’s acting was brilliant although some of his actions were implausible especially towards the end where they seemed out of character.

I watched this as it was nominated for Baeksang and although I was not disappointed, I was not super awed either. Hence an 8.5/10.