REVIEW: ‘A Killer Paradox’ Is A Must-Watch Morality Thriller

Is killing always wrong? Or does the sin of the murdered person outweigh the sin of taking their life? That’s the crux of Netflix’s newest Korean drama series (Kdrama)  A Killer Paradox (Salinja-ng-Nangam). Based on a legendary Korean webtoon of the same name by Ggomabi and Nomabi, like most Korean television series now, the eight-episode thriller is directed by Lee Chang-hee and written for television by Kim Da-Min. Choi Woo-shik plays Lee Tang, an ordinary college student who unwittingly becomes a serial killer while pursued by Detective Nan-gam (Son Suk-ku), a relentless detective devoted to catching him.

Lee Tang (Choi Woo-sik) is an ordinary university student. He works a part-time job at a convenience store, has cheated on his girlfriend, has surface-level friends, and is, for all intents and purposes, a pushover. He blends into the background of life in an attempt to stay under the radar. And when he’s hit, he, by his own admission, has never had the privilege to hit back. But when a rude drunk man shows up at his convenience store, he strikes back for the first time in his life. Only it’s with a hammer to his bully’s head.

Stricken with guilt, Tang is sure that his transgression will end his life as he knows it. I mean, he’s killed a person, and now that person is haunting him, and the police are asking questions. Then, the evidence just disappears. More importantly, however, it was the revelation that the man he killed was a serial killer who had been terrorizing young women in Seoul for four years. So, did he actually do something bad? Or did he save the lives of future victims?

A Killer Paradox asks – are all murders bad?

When he murders again, and that person’s transgressions come to life, Tang begins to understand that maybe this is an uncanny ability. A gift to get rid of evil. He doesn’t want to kill, nor is he tantalized by it. Instead, he just cleans up the messes of the world that do harm to others. As the bodies pile up, Tang begins to change. His style, his hair, everything becomes different as he becomes a serial killer set on removing evil people from the world.

Tang isn’t doing all of this in a vacuum through. As he works his way through criminals, the shrewd Detective Jang Nan-Gam investigates a murder that Tang committed. After crossing paths with Tang repeatedly, it becomes clear that there is something more going on. And so begins a noir obsessive game of cat and mouse. Only Tang is woefully ill-equipped to run from the law and only succeeds because luck remains on his side. However, as Tang dodges Nan-Gam, Song Chon, a former detective with an even more violent streak than our serial killer lead, joins the endless cat-and-mouse chase alone.

The series is framed by Tang’s ascent. He moves from a listless college student who just looks intimidated by the world to a self-asserted thug. On the other side, though, Detective Jang does the opposite. He starts off cool, calm, and collected. He jokes and oozes charisma. He’s intimidating in how much he has everything held together. But his descent into an obsessive detective who lets the case eat at him slowly is excellent.

Actor Choi leaves audiences gobsmacked. From destitute and empty to a man with a purpose, and then full circle again, Tang is as dynamic a character as they come. Choi’s ability to portray one character whose attitude changes so sharply that his physical presence and appearance do, too, is something to behold. Tang’s accident becomes purposeful, and as his divine purpose begins to falter, so does his resolve, and the coward emerges again. Choi plays this kinetically as his character bounces between thoughts, oscillating between cowardice and confidence.

A game of cat and mouse excites A Killer Paradox in all its moral ambiguity.

The glorification that Tang goes through over the course of the series serves the series’ accelerated pacing. While the opening episode takes time to get going as it establishes just how flawed Tang is, once the accident happens, the series never slows. A Killer Paradox artfully weaves flashbacks and context scenes for victims and circumstances that help bolster Tang as a protagonist. The way that the series builds him up into some sort of sacred hero before hurling him off a cliff at the appearance of a new foe, Song Chon (Lee Hee-joon), is masterful.

For his part, Son Suk-ku as Jang Nan-gam is a perfect match for Choi as Tang. Where Tang is a man who sways in the wind even when he’s confident in his choices, Nan-gam is resolute. He is immovable in his approach to securing justice, and his capability of flying off the handle at the sight of injustice is integral to shaping how he responds to the mystery surrounding Tang. With every subsequent coincidence surrounding Tang, Nan-gam digs in deeper to the point of losing his standing as a Detective.

While it would be easy to dismiss the large sequences of the episodes that don’t focus on our leads, A Killer Paradox expertly uses every minute of runtime to pack in the story. We get to know Tang’s victims as much as him. Their crimes vary in severity and often involve violence against women. Thankfully, the series doesn’t choose to exploit these acts of violence by showing them to the audience in detail.

Is it luck, divinity, or is it just something terribly wrong?

Instead, the series often shows the aftermath and the ripples created and lives destroyed. It easily puts the audience on Tang’s side, even when his stupidity in navigating the situations forms a sense of detachment from him. This is most apparent in Tang’s second purposeful killing, where he disposes of two men who have just stabbed a police officer.

Only that wasn’t their crime. Their violence was the assault of a girl when she was in high school, which ultimately led to her suicide. The crimes the men committed aren’t the focus, so much as the ripples of trauma that cascade through her and her family’s life after her violent assault. The compassion that writer Kim Da-Min brings to certain scenes is thoughtful.

Stories about killers who kill bad people aren’t new. The chokehold Dexter had on pop culture in the aughts showed an audience hungry for retribution. While A Killer Paradox rewards its audience with moments of epic comeuppance, how the series complicates the straightforward theme makes it stand out. Does intent matter? Does intent mar the vengeance enacted for victims you don’t know? While some moral elements stop just before they’re deeply explored, others are the guiding frame of the narrative.

Darkly humorous, violent, and never boring, A Killer Paradox is a morality thriller like no other. What begins as a comedy of errors and morphs into a deep detective thriller, it’s one of the finest series on Netflix. But more importantly, it showcases actor Choi Woo-shik’s talent and ability to tackle dynamic characters.

A Killer Paradox is streaming now exclusively on Netflix in the United States.