Trigger (2025)

Trigger lacks depth and substance.

Our story begins when an influx of illegal guns fall into the hands of ordinary citizens in South Korea, a country where guns are outlawed and its population is unaccustomed to such threats. This abrupt change causes mayhem around the country, specifically in Seoul where our story takes place, as it forces the people to confront their biggest fears, frustrations, and the fragility of their society. We follow Lee Do, a righteous cop and former military sniper, as he tries to navigate the chaos, uncover the source of the illegal weapons distribution, and stop the gun violence from escalating.

On the surface, Trigger is supposed to be an exciting thriller packed with action and suspense. It is a typical crime story that has been done a hundred times before successfully. And yet, even with all the variations in the world, the writers of Trigger still fail to take notes. With a weak script, the drama ends up being an underwhelming viewing experience. I fear I need to steer clear of action and crime kdramas made by Netflix from now on, as I also have many criticisms for Mercy for None, another Netflix original that is riddled with the same shortcomings too. Trigger is just the latest to let me down.

The villain here is a joke, the police force being the punchline.
And I have so many questions.

Why are multiple trained police officers unable to fight off and defend a police station against one sex offender who most likely have less experience with guns and less training than they do? Even with a whole armory at their disposal along with their combined strength and expertise, saving the lives of everyone in that precinct still falls entirely on Lee Do. What makes the situation worse is that as the only man to save lives that night, Lee Do still ends up being the one who is reprimanded with a suspension.

How is it possible that a teenage high school student with no connection to any organized crimes is able to gain access to free guns by simply typing "I want to purchase a gun" into the internet search bar, but the entire police force is oblivious as to how the guns are being acquired? In an age of technology, not a single one of them stopped to think about checking the internet first? South Korea is one of the most heavily surveillanced countries in the world, why isn't anyone monitoring the internet for suspicious activity?

And don't even get me started on the plausibility of Lee Do surviving multiple gunshots to the chest and recovering in time for the final showdown shortly after — how is this man not dead?

Everyone around Lee Do have two braincells that they collectively share and pass around among themselves, meanwhile Lee Do is the only one who is competent, intelligent, and indestructible. There are just too many plot holes to keep count of. The lack of realism and logic stops me from immersing into this world.

What disappoints me most of all is perhaps the fact that the illegal guns flooding the country are not distributed for the purpose of profit, but for the amusement of the villain who just wants to cause a disturbance in society and watch the world burn.

Trigger is a glorified action and crime drama about senseless killings for the sake of violence, masquerading as something deeper than it really is. There are real concerns that the drama brings up — such as class disparity, school bullying, a flawed justice system, and mental health — but the themes are just too ambitious for the writers to grasp and they fail to explore these issues properly, leaving the story feeling shallow and the characters underdeveloped. The gunshot sound effects have more depth and substance than the characters and overall story itself.

In conclusion, there isn't much to gain from Trigger, but you will probably enjoy it if you like Mercy for None. Both have different concepts, but they are similar in execution.

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Trigger: Strong Start, Weak Finish

Trigger starts strong with good acting especially the first few episodes. Woo Ji Hyun shines as a student showing why ordinary characters are given those guns—highlighting their personal struggles and moral dilemmas. This setup makes you care about their choices.

The gang internal struggle later ruins it, shifting to pointless violence and losing focus on ordinary people’s motives.

A plus is how the series exposes gun sellers profiting from chaos.

The ending feels unrealistic and unsatisfying, lacking depth or buildup.

I would have preferred a deeper look on how guns would affect the society, through government measures similar to COVID-19’s lockdowns, mask mandates and fear-driven policies, panic buying of essentials .

Exploring more of governments imposed strict controls. This approach might have better reflected the ripple effects of gun violence on both personal lives and public behaviour.

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When Bullets Fly, Logic Dies

Trigger struts in like it owns the place. It promises dystopian thrills, a deep dive into the psychology of rage, and maybe even some searing social commentary. For a moment, you believe it. Then it trips over its own shoelaces, spills coffee on the manifesto, and starts showing stylish gunfights instead.

Our hero, Lee Do, is a former military sniper turned police officer who treats his taser like a baby blanket. He’s calm, empathetic, and apparently the only person in Korea with competency. When massacres break out across the country, he’s reluctantly dragged back into gunplay.

Moon Baek, the man who lights the match, who hands everyone guns not for money, but for ideology. He’s all contradictions: flashy yet tragic, smiling while your moral compass quietly vomits in the corner. His presence crackles. Every scene with him is electric.

At its best, Trigger gives you an unsettling mirror: ordinary people realizing that a gun turns them from background extras into the main characters of their own revenge films. It’s chilling, human, and horribly plausible.

Then… the plot walks into traffic.

A teenager and a middle-aged woman find a gun through a casual Naver search, but the entire police force of South Korea can’t figure it out. “Internet? Never heard of it.” It’s the kind of plot hole you could drive a tank through, slowly, so nobody gets hurt.

The script also has a strange habit of making every character around Lee Do incompetent just so he can shine brighter. It’s not clever. It’s like stacking the chessboard so your opponent only has pawns, then bragging about your strategic genius.

In the end, the show’s grand answer to systemic rage is… well… a little Hallmark. Sweet, maybe, but so emotionally oversimplified it makes you wonder if someone swapped it for a public service announcement.

So Trigger starts like a sleek bullet that is fast, dangerous, aimed with precision, and ends like a firecracker in the rain: a lot of smoke, a little noise, and the lingering smell of something that could’ve been spectacular if only it hadn’t soaked itself in style instead of substance.

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I for one liked this drama. It nailed the coffin on the head concerning how far people will go once they get pushed too far. I don't know...I guess I'm twisted because I enjoyed watching the people who were pushed over the edge get their just desserts. The revenge factor wasn't watered down. It felt real. There are people out there who have been pushed to the brink that makes them get rid of the people who have tormented them for fun. Especially bullies. I can't stand bullies. I love it when a bully gets owned and that happened a lot in this series. Now some got away with making other people's lives miserable a few did not.

I don't know how most countries operate when guns are at play but as for here, in the US, it looks like this type of drama every day. There are measures that's been taken for someone to legally obtain a weapon but there's also a lot of people who have illegally obtained one which is why bad things have always turned out the way it do.

From my take on this drama: never tick a person off because you never know how short their fuse is.

A lot of people complained about the last episode...I don't know how else the last episode could've ended but I'm OK with how it ended. Usually I hate last episodes of Korean dramas because a lot of the times it's too wordy and everything gets wrapped up in a news segment and then it's over.

There are some things in the last episode that left me scratching my head. I don't know but there may be a sequel? There was a scene where the person who started all of the chaos wanted someone else to pick up where the original bad guy left off so that could mean it may be a sequel but it means it may not. I don't know how that would play out if a sequel will follow.

If you can't stomach gun violence then it's suggested that you don't watch. Otherwise it you like seeing bullies getting owned then maybe this drama is for you.

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Good action scenes cannot make up for lackluster story and characterization

Before I'll elaborate any further on this drama, keep in mind that this is NOT a spoiler free review. Proceed with caution. Also, I want to apologize in advance for my poor English, it's not my first language so I'm sorry if I repeat myself or if my opinion is not clear. Feel free to ask any questions.

I got introduced to Kim Nam-Gil in Through The Darkness, which became one of my most favourite kdramas, while I first saw Kim Young-Kwang in Evilive (which I haven't finished but I'll watch it again). Both of them were great in their series so when I learned that they would be the main leads to a new thriller, you can imagine my excitement.

I LOVE thrillers. Give me a good and gripping plot with well-written characters and my money is yours. The premise of Trigger, albeit common and not that groundbreaking, caught my interest immediately. As someone who lives in a gun-free country (Greece), I cannot even fathom what would happen if people got handed guns like sweets. I was very curious to see how the series would explore this matter and based on what I had heard, I expected an intense action-packed thriller, with psychological and philosophical aspects.

Alas, I soon realized that I should had lowered my expectations.

First of all, the plot as a whole was A MESS. We have the main story between the main leads, Lee Do and Moon Baek and then other subplots that are connected to the whole gun flood. Which is totally logical. They needed to show different people who chose to "pull the trigger" under different circumstances. A mentally unstable student, a man charged with sexual assault, a wronged mother, a bullied kid, gangsters...But the problem is that due to the changes regarding the settings and the characters, the pacing became inconsistent. One moment, your attention would be focused on these characters and then the story would shift to that character, then another etc.

At one point, all of that felt pointless. The most unnecessary subplot was definitely the one regarding the gangsters, who found themselves tied to the organization that provided the guns. Too much screen time was wasted on them when they could have used for more efficient parts of the story or better character development. Because of the many different stories and characters, most of the mini arcs fell rather flat and the characters' emotions and struggles were explored in a superficial way.

The best subplots were the one with the mother (Oh Kyeong-Suk) who sought justice for her dead son, the bullied kid (Park Gyu-jin) who wanted to defend himself against his bullies and Lee Do's chief (Cho Hyun-Sik) who wanted to avenge his daughter who had committed suicide because of scammers. I actually cared about these people and I caught myself thinking about how emotions and difficult circumstances can influence our judgement.

The action scenes were one of the better parts of the series. The fighting sequences were intense and fun to watch, watching Lee Do and Moon Baek fighting and shooting was really entertaining and I had a blast. On episode 6 (one of the best by the way), the school shooting part had me at the edge of my seat. I was so anxious to see what would happen.

But good action scenes cannot make up for a lackluster story. Yes, it was cool seeing Lee Do soloing all of these criminals and thugs but I wanted something more. I wanted more exploration regarding people's psychology and despair which leads them to violence. I wanted to see more of the ethical aspects regarding guns and their use for self-defense and justice. At the drama, Lee Do got suspended for killing the sexual offender, even though he did it in order to defend other police officers. And yet we never saw how that affected the public's opinion. It would be a great opportunity to see the common mind being divided into two categories, the ones defending his action because he is a police officer and he had to kill a criminal and the others who would see that as an act of power. But that never happened.

Another aspect that was flat was the characterisation. The main leads were obviously the characters we spend more time with and yet even them were underutilized. And I say that as someone who overall enjoyed watching them (either as a duo or separately). Both actors did a great job at portraying them, Kim Nam-Gil conveyed Lee Do's soft yet ruthless character while Kim Young-Kwang killed it with Moon Baek. The acting saved the characters for me because the writing, on the other hand, was disappointing.

Lee Do was pretty complex. As a child, he saw his family getting killed and later, he had the chance to kill the murderer by pulling the trigger of a gun. But Cho Hyun-Sik stopped him. That event played a tool on his character and shaped his own ideology. When he served in the military as a sniper, the weight of the people he had killed haunted him and he joined the police as a detective to help the public without having to use a gun (I'm not going to comment on that). But in the drama he had to use a gun to take another life (the sex offender's) in order to save another one. His actions came in contrast to his believes but the series barely touched his inner conflict and it didn't explore his trauma that much. At the end, Moon Baek called him out for that and that was it. In addition, I don't think that his trauma was handled that great. In Through The Darkness, Nam-Gil's character had more depth and we saw how his traumatic experiences and the weight of dealing with all of these criminals got the best of him. In Trigger, we didn't get to see it a lot. His character remains complex but on a surface level mostly.

Speaking of Lee Do, I'm sorry but his plot armour became too ridiculous. I could excuse the fact that common citizens like the mentally ill student or the sex offender couldn't hit him with weapons. I could excuse him being able to take down whole groups of thugs who were armed with knives. But taking down Moon Baek's guards who held guns while recovering from his injuries? Having people shoot at him from many places without hitting him not even once? Unbelievable. And yes, this is an action series we're talking about, of course realism is not the priority here. But so many things were over the top to the point I couldn't take them seriously.

And now, Moon Daek. A wasted potential of a villain. He had a tough childhood: being raised from people involved in child trafficking, having his eye ripped off, getting sent to US only to end up at the hands of another child trafficking organization...Of course he would want to seek revenge and it's logical that he grew up to believe that violence is the key for justice and vengeance. But the way he was written was superficial.

For the majority of the series, he was either behaving like an energetic puppy (before his reveal) and then he settled at serving face and smugness. Which was fine by me, I still enjoyed him but I wanted more. We saw that he is meticulous and dangerous but his character wasn't given more depth. If anything, the way he explained his motive was ridiculous which again, makes sense, his sense of justice is kinda ridiculous in the first place but since he was supposed to mirror Lee Do, he should have been written better. After the reveal, the writing for his character felt lazy.

The ending was just all over the place. In the last two episodes everything was happening too fast and the final climax was not a satisfactory pay-off after all of this buildup. Some of the side characters were not provided a good conclusion either. Like, what happened with Gyu-jin and his bullies? Was Oh Kyeong-Suk arrested for killing the politician? The ending was wrapped up too roughly and at this point, I really hope that a second season will be made.

Even though the premise of a society where everyone can get to hold a gun is not groundbreaking, the questions that arise about this matter could be great food for thought. To what extent can people have the freedom of self-defense and how much does it require to be pushed off their limits in order to snap? The series tried to explore these themes but it did it very superficially. Instead of focusing on the action, it should have focused more on the political and psychological part. The first two episodes had this direction and the rest should have been the same. We wasted too much time on side characters, of "telling and not showing" and in the end, I don't think that the goal was achieved.

All in all, I do not regret watching Trigger. It's by no means a terrible drama and I would strongly recommend it to fans of action and thrillers. But if you expect a deeper exploration of guns violence and justice, you might be disappointed. I think that a second season is possible to happen since the organization responsible for the guns trafficking is still on-going and since we didn't actually see Moon Baek get killed. So let's hope for that because that ending was not worth it.

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"Everyone has a trigger"

What is the trigger for a person that will cause them to throw away their future for a moment of vengeance wrapped in the cloak of justice? What is the tipping point for a society lured into self-destruction? Trigger challenges the angel on a person’s shoulder to do the hard thing even as the devil on their other whispers for them to do the thing that will feel good in the moment.

Due to his violent military past, Officer Lee Do has given up on guns and only carries a taser when on patrol. He seeks to show compassion to victims and enforce the law with criminals. South Korea’s stringent gun and ammo laws are suddenly being flouted by everyday citizens as well as criminals leading to numerous deaths and causing panic to incur in society. Do is determined to discover the source of the weapons and the plans of the dealers before Korea falls headlong into gun culture.

Trigger asked pertinent questions and addressed timely problems. While there were criminal elements getting their hands on guns, the more sinister elements involved the stressed-out citizenry clandestinely led down the path to their own annihilation. Bullied children and adults, the daily slings and arrows of casual cruelty, mental illness, and corporate greed and corruption drove people to their trigger points. When there was no recompense, no justice, no recourse for the downtrodden, desperate people with little to lose turned to vigilante justice with a gun. Trigger asked the audience to contemplate whether guns made people safer or less safe.

The production values were high and the story kept a stringent pace. That’s not to say you won’t have to suspend disbelief on occasion. I was relieved a drama finally showed the drawback to the first bullet in an officer’s gun being a blank. Most of the acting was excellent. Kim Nam Gil can always be counted on for a strong performance. I prefer him with facial hair and a devil-may-care grin, but we all have to suffer for his art at times. Kim Won Hae gave a nicely balanced performance as Do’s supervisor and father figure. He was utterly heartbreaking in one scene. Kil Hae Yeon played another distraught and vengeful mother, knowing how to hit all the emotional beats. I quite liked the music as it was neither intrusive nor overly wrought. My biggest complaint was the lighting and makeup that showed every pore on people’s faces and often the theatrical makeup itself.

Lessons I learned: 1) Always check your horoscope. 2) When holding a gun on a person, never stand too close. 3) Never bring a boxcutter to a gun fight. 4) It pays to know who your employees are. 5) A sincere apology could save your life. 6) “You can’t justify your actions with some sort of grade school philosophy.” You can, but it might not work out so well.

Guns are like cockroaches. Once a home is infested you are never going to get rid of them even if you burn the place to the ground. When trust is lost and people live in a state of fear, they are capable of abhorrent actions. And at least in Dramaland, if reminded of their humanity and shown compassion, people in a broken and suffering world can choose a path to a brighter future. I found Trigger entertaining, though it did bog down near the end. I only hope these forms of entertainment can help societies make choices that result in their children never having to practice active shooter drills at school.

25 July 2025
Trigger warnings: Numerous shooting deaths even of children. Because when guns are plentiful, the most vulnerable all too often fall victim.

Several comely nekkid buns at a gangster sauna.

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Starts good then turns disappointing

The drama until the middle is pretty good with a nice build up of the story. The presentation of the ML and other characters is well made. Many of them are endearing and it makes you curious to know how they will solve their problems. Some cases are predictable. Some are not. Many are nicely violent and bloody. The mystery about the guns and how they are distributed is also well handled.

The problem is that once all the parties involved are recognized, the story turns into a cops chasing guns/bad guys and it is not so good. ML becomes a super cop with super shooting skills to get rid of dumb gangsters. There is a lot of pathos in the lecturing and the explanation of the choices made or to make. At some point, it wants so much to look sad, it is ridiculous and unrealistic. The logic behind the guns distribution is weak with a silly ending. There are some plot holes as some endearing characters just vanished. Finally, the ML survives but the bad guys too. So there is no real satisfaction.

Overall, I enjoyed the drama until it just went downhill. 7/10

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Interesting premise, well-done development, bad ending.

I feel the premise itself led to more interesting plot beats, and made the antagonist role shine very much which it's nice, considering the cartoon-ish villains that usually appears in kdramas. However, I don't know if it was a mix of the script or if it was the lead actor performance, but the lead character was... Underwhelming.
I connected more with Mrs. Oh and Sargent Cho(?) than with him, even though his backstory was explored. The actor didn't sold me enough to be an ex mercenary and a police who hates guns. I mean. That would be easy to do. The lead actor doesn't have enough presence to sell it. The issue with his character build, in the script, was that he was too one dimensional: he wanted to stop the guns, yes, but does that mean he must pull some moves that doesn't makes sense (like the hug with the boy at the end, wtf?)? Or that his trauma very much was screaming white saviour (and guess what? His backstory involves Middle East).
Frankly, it was a very much cop propaganda, that doesn't even explore how guns are only a symptom of a global mindset that classifies every country in first or third world countries, and this involvement with police corruption, over-militarism, and government vs narco-state control.
Also, a lot of the lead's fighting scenes were so cartoon-ish that it made me recall John Wick by how outlandish they were and the choreography was too antiquated to be part of the narrative of the series. What happened in there?
Moon Baek was the best part of this kdrama. Wish the ending was better specially because it awfully clashes with the tone of the rest of the series, but kdramas will never deliver strong enough in this aspect. Maybe if this was a urban fantasy a la Chainsaw Man, with Moon Baek being the Gun God, or that the ending said, instead, that nothing was solved even with guns out of the picture. If you're going to show a potential reality, finish it with a realistic ending.

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Ridiculous and Very Disappointing

So disappointing with a great actor like Kim Nam Gil, but wow this was bad. It had cartoon-character villains, extreme sentimentality, silly dialogue, a caricature of a psychpathic villain, and ethically inconsistent views (both that guns are terrible and that even so when you see a horribly abused person use one you feel rather happy he/she got their revenge). The lead character is portrayed as heroic to the point of being angelic yet is also described as a former mercenary who has killed 99 people (what exactly was he doing then that makes him so morally pure today)? The sentimental twists are blatantly forecast and must have been embarrassingly bad for some of the good actors to play, and the failure of the police to arrive at or effectively cope with ongoing emergency situations was very implausible given what is shown in other k-drama thrillers.

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A mixed story of Squid Game and Weak Hero Class

-At first, the vibe was like in the Weak Hero Class. This film brought attention to bullying in schools and all kinds of bullying. And revealed that every single person is a kind hearted person, but they went crazy from the bullying. This is Weak Hero Class.

-The second thing is, the message, the point is the same as Squid Game. How easy it is to manipulate, to change people if they get an "opportunity" and prove that humanity sucks by putting a gun in their hands and it is their choice whether to pull the trigger or not. Lee Do was like Gi-hun. And we don't have a clear answer as to why Moon Baek did what he did. In the SG it was more clear about the frontman.

-There were so unlogical things, like why it's so easy to walk into a police station with a gun in your hand.
We have very few characters and after many incidents, people acted as if nothing had happened.

-The ending was like an ending of an episode, not a season. It was just so weird and not complete. The whole series was very dizorganized.

-The only independent message is built solely around revenge, the decision is in our hands and we can defeat revenge.

•Overall, in my opinion, it's not a bad series, I think the idea is not that unique but good, I like the acting, but the workmanship was bad.

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Double-edged guns

A premise that looks cool on paper and jam packed with actions, the setup of the two contrasting leads is great but how the story progresses at the latter stage is a little unconvincing, those manipulation plans are just far from reality. The whole politicized guns distribution situation at the end is even harder to believe, but what it does right though is the rage shown on suppressed individuals that is valid enough to keep the storyline moving. It's just that it became a bit too ambitious on the world building side of things, where logical reasoning slowly fades away and never recovers.

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? Someone Just Mailed You a Gun… What Now?!

Okay guys, imagine this:

You’re the bad guy — boom, a gun lands in your hands.
You’re weak and struggling — and suddenly someone sends you a gun.
What would you do? That’s basically the wild setup of Trigger (2025). And let me tell you — people aren’t shooting in video games here, they’re doing it in real life, with real consequences.

This one’s a full-on crime drama, so if you’re hoping for a cute love story or even a hint of romance... yeah, don’t. It’s dark, gritty, and totally focused on the moral mess that unfolds when people are literally handed power.

If you’re into intense crime plots with no distractions, this one’s definitely worth a watch. Personally, I like a little love in my chaos, so I missed that emotional pull — but if you're here for action and drama only, Trigger might just hit the bullseye for you.

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