The Killing Vote

Slow intro, but a gripping and touching story 'til the end

How complicit are we when the people around us commit crimes? Are we complicit in murder if we vote for the death penalty? Some cases are clear and unequivocal, while others are more nuanced and complicated. The Killing Vote did a good job of telling the painful stories of the various main characters so that viewers will not doubt their motives. It is easy to root for these characters.

The writing is also clever enough to keep you guessing as to who the mastermind is. There are lots of little side mysteries that make this series a lot of fun to watch. It also shows how hard it is to fight evil that is supported by corruption and political power.

Most of the actors played their roles convincingly, even the child actors. The only acting or characterization, or both, that was unrealistic was Im Ji Yeon, who plays the female lead and is also police officer. Perhaps she's supposed to represent the Average Jane, but her lack of discipline and and downright impulsive behaviour would have gotten her flunked out of police academy in real life, let alone be able to pursue a career. Im is very pretty and put a lot of effort into making this character appear likeable, however, and it would be interesting to see her in a more serious role.

The music is another major disappointment. Generic techno music is fine since social media, streaming, computers and computer hacking are a major plot device in the story. However, the awful Korean & English mix of rap music is annoying because, as usual, the English lyrics make no sense. Might as well have just made it a completely Korean-language song.

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Frustrating but good intake on jurisdiction system - Let's vote!

The beginning was really hard for me to watch, especially the main FL and her sister, who were so annoying. The same goes for the ML, as he always tried to catch the culprit he needed to bring to justice by law, but he knew very well the legal system was broken as he had fabricated evidence so many times. I found the way the teenagers were involved in the case absurd as well. Also, the drama did not catch my attention. I was about to drop the drama, but luckily it got better after four or five episodes, and I got hooked.

I liked the storyline concept of getting justice as there are so many loopholes within the law. The drama got better with each episode, and it was interesting to see who else was involved in vote-killing.

The ending leaves it open for a new season if there ever will be one.

Overall, the drama effectively portrays the idea of taking justice into one's own hands when the system fails and highlights the influence of money and power in manipulating the justice system.

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It's good but could be better

LIKE

How the mastermind never forced anyone to participate in voting - there was always a choice to close the app and turned away

When Joo Hyun told Moo Chan she knew who was the real culprit behind killing vote

When Ji Hoon asked Seok Joo if he resented him for picking up Na Rae late

When Jin Soo told Ji Young his location before she instructed for a "XX" to happen

Kim Kwon was so good in portraying Lee Min Soo - when he was driving Seok Joo mad by imitating Na Rae (my god that scene I applauded!)

DISLIKE

The ending

MUSIC - personal fav

Blue - Aalia

REWATCH VALUE

Five for now

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Need to write a review because one person misunderstood it and write bad review

This is from a webtoon with the same name published in 2016, it is not the same as the Devil Judge (2021) although the same voting thing.
1. The drama is mystery thriller, so the writer will give clues for each episodes, you must be alert and pick the clues.
2. Some watchers ignore the clues from episode 1 and missed the connection.
3. Every characters has connections even the simplest character.
4. Main complain I found (up to ep. 3):
-Why the FL was choose to investigate- she is related to the whole story
-Why use robot voice for the Gaetal? the voice need modulation to hide the real person
-Why the FL act like that? she has her history with the case
-Why the school students-also related to the case.
-Why the residents acted like that - It is like that in korea, people hate the police and their government decision with death penalties
Please wait before complaining and throw unrelated comments or review.

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My disappointment

The killing vote and the whole thing is good but we can easily guess some characters role in this drama no one questioned heroin sister for being in the live with gaetal and the boy who killed jihoon is escape easily.. no one talk about that.. at some points there is no logic and there is no explanation why that doctor helped kwon and why the police office help to mix nicotine in Lee's drink and who is he or how they make him to help. and the people who helped to escape jihoon from Hyun how did they know jihoon is gaetel who texted them.. if you watch this drama just for thriller without expecting perfect logic this is good drama

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when embarking on a journey of punishment, make sure to dig two graves

a previous reviewer mentioned that show could have been squid game-level iconic, and i would like to extrapolate on that concept b.c i completely agree. if only they would have committed to the promise of the sordid premise, we would have gotten a compelling narrative and narratively complete story.

i'll start with our lynchpin, superintendent kim muchan. we're introduced to a character (and a team) that has an end-justifies-the-means approach to criminal-napping without regards for procedure, shame, or morals. i was really looking forward to that because i only watched tkv /for/ park haejin, and morally-gray really brings out the colour of his eyes... but this is not the character we get throughout the show. several times, the superintendent contradicts his own values, and i'd even go so far as to say he loses focus. too often he shows regard and places trust into people that at minimum have no reason to do the same to him! or they have straight up (ostensibly) betrayed him. so many factors would be different if only he were more consistent, and i believe the scriptwriters did this to portray him sympathetically—unnecessarily, i will underscore.

on a similar note, i was very confused by all the blurring in the show. what is the point of creating a show like this when you're going to censor not just mutilated bodies but also graffiti and knives? if you care so much about viewers' sensibilities, then produce a romcom instead. much of what made squid game so successful was how visceral it was, even for non-gruesome scenes (the tongue stuff during the dalgona event comes to mind). in my opinion, censoring visual aspects the way tkv did is not just a disservice to the story they're telling but also an insult to the audience.

finally, tkv did not lean into the moral quandaries enough, which is a shame because messages/themes stay with viewers far longer than cliffhangers and plot twists. how complicit are the public who votes, the media who elevate gaetal's platform, the legislature for generating laws that can be abused? so much focus is on the police (and really, #acab) that none of these other systems are called into question, which is a major shortcoming of the show. gaetal creates a "national death penalty," but not enough of the nation and how it works is involved in the story.

if these aspects were rectified, i would have been much more satisfied with the show, regardless of how i felt about certain characters.

but now i will go onto my personal disdain for certain characters lol i grew a strong disdain for the sisters as the plot progressed. joo hyun is too incompetent as a field detective to have attempted over half the stuff she did in the show. why was she always going places without backup?? if you're gonna work in cyber, you /have/ to accept that half of your worth is playing guy-in-the-chair for the brawn enforcement. plus, she was always emotionally compromised by her little sister's well-being. i'm not saying she shouldn't be worried, but i /am/ saying she shouldn't be going out in the field if she's going to lose her composure so easily. leave that to the traumatised and unattached members of the special investigation unit, please. (half-joking) i have these same gripes with her sister, but magnified tenfold because she's literally just a teenager and hurt more than she helped every single time she got involved.

i will wrap my review with this: park haejin explained in an interview that he asked the writers not to include a romance between the main leads as it would have distracted from the show. before watching, i disagreed with him - i'm of the opinion that romance is never extraneous. however, finishing this show made me appreciate how he is apparently the only one on this show who cared about the intended story. this show would have sucked even harder if they made me sit through a jank and haphazard romance subplot xD let's ignore the fact that i ended up really disliking joo hyun and being disappointed by the characterisation of kim muchan: this show is ~860 mins long. with all that time at its disposal, it /still/ didn't tell the story it should have/that i was wanting to see. if any of that time was relegated to developing a romance, who knows how much more the mystery-thriller aspects would have suffered ☠️ we all need to bow and thank park haejin for his service!!!

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An Interesting Watch

I was keeping up with this drama’s updates since it was announced. I kinda wanted to read the original Manhwa but then I thought otherwise because I didn’t want to spoil anything for myself.

The first half is interesting to say the least. There’s lots of characters, we see a bunch of side stories and the the cat and mouse game begins. But right after that it almost felt like they were just dragging the storyline a bit too much. The underage characters annoyed me so much to the point I went through the comments to check if anyone else was finding them annoying. Lo and Behold, some people did.

I really wanted to see character development for some characters especially Mu Chan. Man it hurts so much to see him being the way he is 😂 even in the end. If I were to say the ending just brings us back to square one then it wouldn’t be an understatement. We basically end up at a dead end. Unless they’re planning a s2, it was a very half assed ending in my opinion.

Coming back to the characters, Kim Mu Chan my boy you let me down. The FL was okayish. The professor’s character was good and my favourite has to be the teacher guy (don’t mind me I finished watching this like a month ago so I cannot remember their names)

I shipped the main protagonists 😂 and loved their banters in the beginning. When she goes to his house, how he experience a “nightmare”, when she picks up a gun and decides to shoot the villain guy. I really wished they had more moments together because in the later half they started acting like strangers. All that chemistry just for them to be estranged? tsk tsk

Now the plot. I hate how Korean cyber unit couldn’t trace the IP address for the life of them. The whole steaming thing was very unrealistic but I get it, it’s fiction. I let it slide but still it was just hard to swallow.

The character motivations often didn’t align with their personalities. I hate how they killed that ONE character in the end. It was so unnecessary. (unless they’re planning on playing a trick on us??)

Where’s the backstory for our protagonists?? Kim Mu Chan lost his mother but what happened next?? What’s the story behind the FL’s scar? Why do we never find any closure for their traumas? Maybe they’re planning all of that for S2. 🤷🏻‍♀️

But this Kdrama did bring me out of my Kdrama slump. I feel like 2023 was a bad year for crime-thriller genre. This was a good addition to it and a good way to end such a terrible year.

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Is this a joke or something? Who writes such stupid scenarios???

Just three episodes. That was my threshold on watching a pile of impossible plot nonsenses!
Spoilers ahead.


This drama's plot is based on tbe following technically impossible scenario. A self proclaimed avenger of Judicial injustices sends via sms on each and every single Korean person's smartphone an Android app ( like this could be even possible, I mean to send a whole app via sms ) in order to use it and vote for or against the execution of an alleged criminal.
The app auto installs ifself lol... but strangely this doesn't bother or worry a good number of people whose smartphones were actually hacked.
Instead they use the auto installed app (a.k.a malware) in order to vote for or against the execution of the criminal instead of freaking out for such a massive hacking incident and call their mobile providers and the Digital Crime Police or whatever such department deals in S. Korea with such cases. Anyway they go on and use the malware to vote not worrying that this app might make their smartphones explode or something!!

The same type of poll is repeated after 15 days with no reactions whatsoever from anyone. The hacker "avenger" is streaming a video too through the malware app straight into the hacked devices asking their owners to vote again via their hacked phones.
Which they do because due to their obviously limited or non existent IQ don' t mind having installed in their phones an app that they never willingly installed themselves, and they don' t care either who hacked their phones, while also no one else is taking any action to prevent them from doing so, either by advising them to delete the auto installed malware app, or disconnect the hacked devices from the mobile network, or take action to shutdown the mobile network temporarily in order to prevent the vote of a second killing. Letting the public vote freely in self arranged referendums, from a malware app for an execution is not so serious as COVID after all! LOL LOL LOL...!
I assume that at the fifth episode (that I didn't bother to watch) the smartphone hacker avenger asks the public if they would like him to execute the S.K prime minister! They vote yes and then justice and democracy prevails!!

And that' s all. I can't bother writing something more about the complete and utter stupidity of this plot concept but I can' t bother either to watch the rest of this nonsense of a drama.

Who writes such stupid scenarios???!

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De Uma Premissa Brilhante a Um Final Frustrante e Contraditório

"The Killing Vote" começou com uma premissa envolvente e eletrizante. A ideia de uma votação popular decidindo o destino de criminosos era inovadora e gerou grande expectativa. No entanto, à medida que a trama avançou, especialmente do meio para o final, a história começou a desmoronar, culminando em um final decepcionante e mal estruturado.

Em narrativas como essa, é comum que o público acabe torcendo pelo vilão ou anti-herói, e Gaetal era esse personagem complexo que inicialmente parecia seguir esse caminho. Contudo, a tentativa de reverter isso e retratá-lo como totalmente errado no decorrer da história foi um erro que afastou a conexão emocional com o público. Os protagonistas, Kim Moo Chan e Joo Hyun, que no início eram interessantes, começaram a se tornar extremamente irritantes, em parte devido à hipocrisia de suas ações. Kim Moo Chan, por exemplo, cometia vários atos ilegais para prender culpados, mas queria dar lições sobre seguir a lei. Joo Hyun, por sua vez, também tomou medidas questionáveis para pegar Gaetal e ainda teve a ousadia de dizer que não concordava com os métodos de Kim Moo Chan.

Uma ironia central da história foi Kim Moo Chan e Joo Hyun perseguirem Kwon Seok Joo e o filho dele, alegando que era "para protegê-los". Isso foi completamente contraditório, pois Kim Moo Chan sabia que o sistema não funcionava e que os poderosos sempre sairiam por cima. Ainda assim, no final, Kim Moo Chan culpou Kwon Seok Joo pela morte do filho, numa tentativa de pegar a deputada corrupta e, mesmo assim, ela saiu impune. Esse arco tornou ainda mais evidente o quanto a história falhou em criar uma conclusão coerente ou satisfatória.

Esse discurso moralista sobre "fazer o certo e seguir a lei" acabou enfraquecendo a história, porque, nesse tipo de enredo, o público muitas vezes quer ver a revolta contra o sistema e torcer pelo anti-herói, não ser forçado a lidar com discussões éticas cansativas.

O pior de tudo foi o final aberto, que deixou várias questões importantes sem resposta. Não foi explicado se Kwon Seok Joo morreu, a deputada corrupta continuou livre e ainda planejando novos crimes, o que foi frustrante. Além disso, o conceito de "voto da morte", que parecia ter tanto potencial para uma revolução, acabou não fazendo diferença significativa na trama.

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Justice ou vengeance ?!? Le dilemme de "The Killing Vote"...

"The Killing Vote"… rien que le spitch de départ m’a vendu du rêve... un mystérieux “Gaetal” qui envoie un SMS à tout le pays pour décider de la mort de criminels qui ont échappé à la justice ⚖️📱. Franchement, c’est digne d’un thriller qui te colle à l'écran et te fait te poser mille questions sur la morale et la société. Et franchement au début, j’y ai cru 😳🔥. L’ambiance sombre, les premiers épisodes étaient intrigants, le trio de flics et suspects qui s’installe… j’étais à fond 👌🏻

Mais voilà, plus les épisodes avançaient, plus j’ai senti un essoufflement 😮‍💨. Le concept est génial, mais l’exécution ?!?… pas à la hauteur. Je trouve que les dialogues sont parfois trop explicatifs, il y a des twists qui manquent de punch, et l'enquête qui se répète... au point de finir par devenir prévisible 😩

Les personnages, eux, avaient de quoi marquer. Park Hae Jin est solide dans son rôle de profiler taciturne, Lim Ji Yeon est charismatique en flic badass (même si son perso manque parfois de cohérence 😶‍🌫️), et Kwon Seok Joo, le prisonnier brillant et dérangeant. C'est clairement celui qui m’a le plus captivée 🫰🏻. Mais honnêtement, je n’ai jamais réussi à m’attacher complètement à eux... 🤷🏼‍♀️

Et puis cette fin… 😵. Clairement, j’ai eu l’impression qu’on m’arrachait la télécommande des mains... Pouf !rideau, sans véritable décharge émotionnelle... Pas de claque, juste de la frustration...

Alors oui, "The Killing Vote" reste un drama intéressant à découvrir pour son concept fort et ses questionnements sur la justice populaire 👍🏻. Mais à mes yeux, il restera surtout un drama qui avait tout pour être inoubliable… et qui n’a pas su aller au bout de son potentiel 🥲✌🏻

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Eu definitivamente fiquei surpresa em perceber como todos os dramas coreanos de investigação, assassinos, vingança e etc, sempre me surpreendem positivamente nos quesitos: história, ganchos, atuação, efeitos, trilha sonora e por isso sempre foi nota máxima em todos. E este não foi diferente.
É simplesmente viciante e muitas vezes nos fazem questionar o que faríamos no lugar e entender o que cada um ali sente.
Confesso que chorei no episódio 11 porque o plot inteiro levava a uma percepção, mas eu sentia que algo iria acontecer com o Ji Hun. E gostaria muito de saber qual foi o acordo da Min Ji e da Chae Do Hui, porém eu até imagino o que seja.
Eu adorei o final com o gancho para uma segunda temporada, um segundo Gaetal/Dog Mask, gostaria MUITO de ver o Mu Chan como tal e a Ju Hyeon o caçando talvez ou até se aliando a ele.
Mas fiquei revoltada com a Min Ji sair ilesa de tudo que fez.

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