Mercy For None: Episodes 1-7: Series Review

by starrygazer

The world of Mercy for None is full of subterfuge, backstabbing, and violence. When our protagonist’s brother meets an untimely death, our antihero jumps back into the criminal underworld he had left behind. Will he be able to find out who is behind his brother’s death? And will he manage to survive long enough to get his revenge?

EPISODES 1-7: Series Review

To get a lay of the land, the series begins with a flashback to 2010 with NAM GI-JUN (So Ji-sub) still working as a feared member of the mob. Rival mob bosses LEE JU-WOON (Heo Jun-ho) and GU BONG-SAN (Ahn Gil-kang) were not yet rivals at this point, and we learn that Gi-jun had bartered for a job for his little brother NAM GI-SEOK (Lee Jun-hyuk).

In the present, Ju-woon leads the Juwoon gang with Bong-san leading the Bongsan gang (the names are easy enough to remember). They have a Past of some sort but operate under a truce and often have regular meetings to keep the peace. Both men run their gangs independently and operate legitimate business fronts for their criminal enterprises. In their first meeting that we see in the present, Bong-san admits his troublemaker son GU JUN-MO (Gong Myung) has created a mess by bringing in outside mercenaries to kill a Bongsan manager.

Because he wants to keep his son’s reputation from sinking even lower within the organisation, he asks Ju-woon to help him by “taking care” of these mercenaries. In return, Bong-san offers to help fix Ju-woon’s building site problem and take the financial hit. The terms are agreeable to Ju-woon, so he asks his right-hand man and his chosen successor to the company (gang) NAM GI-SEOK (Lee Jun-hyuk) to handle this,

Gi-seok visits Jun-mo, who is with the mercenaries, and tells them they have three days to leave the country. He also informs Jun-mo about the bosses’ deal. Jun-mo, rankling at having his power questioned, shows off his sparkling personality, with a taunt about Gi-jun’s incident and what he had to do to leave the gang life with his life intact (he had to cut his own Achilles’ tendon). He tops it off by calling Gi-seok a mooch who’s living off of Juwoon’s largess. That earns him a few slaps from Gi-seok (very restrained if you ask me), Jun-mo is enraged by the slaps and tells Gi-seok he’s dead. Silly, foolish little boy.

After his visit with Jun-mo, he heads out to see Gi-jun for the first time in six years. Gi-jun is a man of the forest now, running a campsite and generally leading a quiet life. Though it’s been years since they saw each other, the reunion is subdued, with Gi-jun asking no questions of his brother. Gi-seok says that Joo-woon wants him to take over the Joowoon Group, but he’s thinking of quitting. He casually says he might work with Gi-jun instead. Something seems off, and it doesn’t go unnoticed by Gi-jun.

Gi-seok goes home, and while he’s working, a sensor light turns on near his front door, luring him to the parking garage. He’s jumpy and thinks it’s just the cat that keeps coming back, but in an instant, he’s surrounded by a lot of teenagers with weapons. One thing about Gi-seok is that he is not an easy target. Even though he gets blindsided and stabbed in the side, the teens aren’t a match for him. But then he is met with a bigger problem – an assassin.

Gi-jun receives a phone call about Gi-seok’s death and arrives at the funeral, heading straight to Ju-woon and Bong-san to ask what happened. Gi-jun had kept his promise to live like he was a ghost after the incident; in return, Ju-woon had promised to keep Gi-seok out of harm’s way. With that promise broken, he wants to know if they were involved in Gi-seok’s death. They both deny any involvement but Gi-jun isn’t the type of man to just take their word for it.

At the funeral, we also learn that though Gi-seok was Ju-woon’s pick for successor, Ju-woon actually has a son, LEE GEUM-SON (Choo Young-woo). He’s actually a prosecutor, which is probably the worst profession the son of a criminal could pick, apart from police officer. (Or could it be the best profession?)

Gi-jun straps up his ankle (he can’t walk without the strap thanks to his Achilles being damaged) and goes digging for information. He goes to the police station and manages to talk his way into a visit with the teen who’s taken the fall for Gi-seok’s murder (and led the initial attack), Jung Hui-chan. Gi-jun asks who gave the order, but Hui-chan isn’t willing to talk.

Gi-jun goes after the kid’s friends and little brother to get some leverage. Hui-chan had warned his friends in advance so while the teenagers think they’ve set a trap, Gi-jun gets the better of the punks swiftly. The battle is short, a chopstick through both cheeks of one, a leg broken, a can pushed in someone’s mouth – it was both horrifying and brilliantly done. And he finally reaches Hui-chan’s brother, which motivates Hui-chan to talk. He admits he got the order from a website called Graveyard.

Gi-jun gets the information about Graveyard from Hui-chan’s lawyer, LAWYER YOON (Lee Sang-hee). She explains that the website is a criminal’s job board where people desperate for money can take on jobs like being a fall guy or beating someone up. If any of the “workers” get caught, she is called in to represent them and keep things above board. Lawyer Yoon gives Gi-jun the card of the CEO, and it’s his old friend SHIM SEONG-WON (Lee Beom-soo). CEO Shim runs Graveyard and a company that looks legit but just handles cleanup for the gangs when things get bloody.

Gi-jun goes to CEO Shim’s office and makes a tiny scene (think lots of bodily harm) to pressure CEO Shim into giving him the info on who gave the order to kill Gi-seok. CEO Shim breaks and admits it was Jun-mo.

At the same time, Ju-woon receives the same information that it was Jun-mo’s doing. CEO Shim gives Bongsan solider KIM CHUN-SEOK (Ahn Se-ho) a call giving him the heads up that Gi-jun is gunning for Jun-mo. Things are about to get very messy.

Bong-san meets with Ju-woon again, about Jun-mo’s mess. The two men and their gangs have operated along strict rules following Gi-jun’s “mistake” years back. The rule: Misbehavior of any kind calls for a penalty on a scale equal to the misbehavior. It’s very much an eye for an eye, and since Jun-mo took out Gi-seok, the Juwoon group would be entitled to take Jun-mo’s life. Bong-san wants to make a deal. In return for Jun-mo’s life, he’ll give up his crown jewel hotel and territory. Ju-woon is amenable to the deal, but Gi-jun arrives and makes it very clear that he knows who gave the order and will see to it that things are sorted according to the rule.

Bong-san deploys his men to locate and hide Jun-mo. Though not without some hairy moments where he nearly gets caught by Gi-jun, the little snake escapes and is tucked away in a safe house. Gi-jun stops by to see an old friend, CHOI BYUNG-HO (Im Hyun-guk), and asks him a favour: make one of special bats for him. It’s a modified metal baseball bat with a weighted end and it’s sort of a sophisticated version of a caveman’s weapon. The bat will take some time to make, so in the meantime, Byung-ho gives Gi-jun a different gift, a metal caliper for his ankle.

Gi-jun gets a visit from Gi-seok’s friend and right-hand, man CHEON HAE-BEOM (Jung Geon-joo). Hae-beom is unhappy at Juwoon’s lack of action when it was now public knowledge that Bongsan had killed Gi-seok. When he’d asked his sunbae, CHOI SEONG-CHEOL (Jo Han-chul) about the matter, he was told to drop it as Ju-woon had made the decision not to do anything. This prompted Hae-beom to seek out Gi-jun. He doesn’t want to follow a boss who will let Gi-seok’s death go unpunished.

Gi-jun drops in on CEO Shim and asks him to find where Jun-mo is hiding. I say he asks, but really, he doesn’t give CEO Shim much of a choice. Meanwhile, Bong-san is investigating what actually happened to Gi-seok, in an attempt to clear Jun-mo of any wrongdoing. Bong-san does find something fishy and, with a little torture of a detective, gets an audio file of someone else ordering a hit on Gi-seok. He also traces the money for the hit back to Ju-woon’s company. (Fishy.)

Bored out of his mind at the safe house, Jun-mo asks Chun-seok for the truth behind Gi-jun’s departure from gangster life. Chun-seok explains that back then, there was a big power struggle under the old gang boss, Chairman Oh. Back then, all the men of Bongsan and Juwoon worked for Chairman Oh.

Chairman Oh wanted to expand the business into Japan and while they worked on gaining territory, Bong-san and Ju-woon were ambushed by their rival gang. They were losing until Gi-jun showed up and finished off their rivals. Gi-jun’s work helped Bong-san and Ju-woon earn favour with Chairman Oh, and rumors spread that he would hand the business over to them instead of his son.

Chairman Oh’s son was furious and ordered a hit on Bong-san and Ju-woon. While the hit failed, Gi-jun decided to take out the Chairman’s son in retaliation. Everyone at the time thought it was uncharacteristic of Gi-jun to move so rashly and we eventually find out that it was actually Gi-seok who had been manipulated into doing the hit. The situation escalates and it becomes clear that they need to either kill Chairman Oh, or get ready to die themselves. And just like that, Chairman Oh was gotten rid of in the space of a day. So Gi-jun both made it possible for Bong-san and Ju-woon to level up to gang boss, but also violated a rule which meant he had to pay a price. Because everything worked out so well for Bong-san and Ju-woon, they decided to let him keep his life and cut his Achilles tendon instead.

Jun-mo can’t quite believe the Gi-jun was ever that dangerous and with storytime over, he decides to escape from the safe house once and for all. As cocky and arrogant as ever, he calls up his mercenaries with a job: Kill Gi-jun. Chun-seok gets threatened into luring Gi-jun into the trap and a brutal two-against-one fight ensues. The mercenaries have some very large machetes but Gi-jun has some mad matrix-esque moves and Gi-jun bests both of the mercenaries. (I can finally unclench.) But unfortunately for Gi-jun, while he was avoiding getting killed, both bat-man Byung-ho and Chun-seok don’t manage to survive run-ins with Jun-mo and some of his vicious friends. (I will not be sad when Jun-mo bites it.)

Jun-mo calls Gi-jun to jeer at him about the deaths and lure Gi-jun into coming after him. Jun-mo has hired what appears to be a house full of thugs to fight Gi-jun. Gi-jun now has his bat, and I swear he is part machine the way he swings that thing around. He does take some hits, but ultimately he beats down the majority and the stragglers run off. There’s one final opponent to beat before he faces Jun-mo, a former champion fighter. Exhausted from the previous fights, Gi-jun is not looking good against this boxer. (I thought it might be lights out for him a couple of times.)

Gi-jun perseveres, with Jun-mo’s non-stop taunts about Gi-seok’s death seeming to strengthen him. Gi-jun finally takes the boxer down. All that’s left is the little pipsqueak. Realizing he’s cornered and alone, Jun-mo attempts to talk things out with Gi-jun, but Gi-jun wastes no time in inflicting a little pain and killing Jun-mo.

Bong-san calls Jun-mo, and is stricken when Gi-jun answers. He knows what that means for his son, and while Bong-san tries to explain that Jun-mo wasn’t really to blame, Gi-jun doesn’t seem to hear it. He simply tells Bong-san that everything was done by the rule. On his way out, Gi-jun is driving over a bridge when his car is rammed and driven off into the water.

It appears Gi-jun’s making a new friend in Hae-beom was a wise decision, as Hae-beom rescues him from the riverbank and takes him to a doctor. After Gi-jun’s car is found without him in it, Bong-san and Ju-woon have another meeting. Bong-san asks Ju-woon outright if he was the one who had ordered Gi-seok’s death, because he tracked the money for the hit to Juwoon. Ju-woon denies responsibility, but he knows who might be behind it.

MR. KIM (Cha Seung-won) is a high-ranking officer in the police force who has worked with Bong-san and Ju-woon since the days of Chairman Oh. Mr. Kim helps the gangs maintain peace (for a price) and keeps evidence on all of them in order to maintain his control. Ju-woon meets with Mr. Kim to ask why he syphoned money from him to kill Gi-seok, and Mr. Kim says it wasn’t him. He points Ju-woon in the direction of his son, Geum-son.

The lengths fathers will go to protect their sons… Ju-woon realizes Geum-son is in danger if Bong-san is left standing. In the end, Ju-woon can’t let his son face any danger and he takes Bong-san out.

But why would a prosecutor get involved in the family business? It turns out that while Ju-woon had taken pains to steer his son onto a law-abiding path, Geum-son had always wanted to be part of the family business. It’s their biggest point of contention. Ju-woon didn’t choose the criminal life, the life chose him and he wanted better options for his son.

With Mr. Kim whispering in his ear, Geum-son has been moving in the background all this time to ensure that Juwoon would end up with Bongsan’s assets and territory. Casualties be damned, Geum-son will expand Juwoon’s reach and he’ll take over for his father whether he likes it or not.

Ju-woon is not happy and he sees Mr. Kim’s fingerprints everywhere, so he gives Gi-jun a full debrief. He explains who Mr. Kim and how he’s been pulling the strings all this time. One way or another, Ju-woon wants to get rid of Mr. Kim. He invites Mr. Kim to his home for a “meeting” (a.k.a. meet the Grim Reaper) but Mr. Kim gets the upper hand and shoots Ju-woon in the stomach, leaving him to bleed out in his chair. When Gi-jun drops by to see Ju-woon, he finds him dead and the police swoop in to arrest him and frame him for the death.

After his arrest, when Gi-jun realizes he’s being transported somewhere, he knows they are going to kill him, so he starts swinging, and Gi-jun gets out alive. CEO Shim comes to the rescue and helps Gi-jun out, as Mr. Kim had forewarned him that a cleanup would be needed. It will be the last time he helps out, as he’s leaving the country. But before he goes, he tells Gi-jun where to find Mr. Kim. It’s unfortunate for CEO Shim that he won’t get far, as Geom-son has put a hit out on him.

Geom-son is out for revenge as well now, and wants to tie up loose ends. He knows that Mr. Kim killed his father and while he can’t get his hands dirty to avenge his dad, he brings one of Mr. Kim’s assassins to his side. SHIMANE (Lee Jae-yoon) has new marching orders: Kill Mr. Kim and Gi-jun.

Gi-jun is also on a mission to kill Mr. Kim but he runs into Shimane first. Gi-jun gets the better of him, despite looking like the walking dead at this point. Then Gi-jun comes face to face with Mr. Kim, who tries to weasel his way out by blaming everything on Geum-son. (Hmm, shirking responsibility much?) The fight between them is savage, and Gi-jun makes sure Mr. Kim feels pain before he dies.

Now for Gi-jun’s last target. It’s not enough for Geum-son to die, he has to hurt before he does. While Geum-son has gathered his superiors from the prosecutor’s office and the highest ranking men from the Juwoon-Bongsan merger for a lavish meal at what used to be Bongsan’s finest luxury hotel. He takes the stage to talk about the new world he envisions for them all, and just when he thinks he’s won, a flurry of phone notifications results in everyone filing out of the banquet. Gi-jun had handed over all of Mr. Kim’s evidence to Hae-beom – including a recording of Geum-son admitting to ordering Gi-seok’s murder. Hae-beom got help from Lawyer Yoon and thanks to their work, every news channel is talking about the sitting prosecutor who orders murders. Geum-son’s career as a prosecutor and the new world he wanted have gone up in smoke.

The final showdown between Geom-son and Gi-jun is inevitable. Geom-son is armed and shoots Gi-jun before attempting to shoot himself, but Gi-jun is not having that. Gi-jun slices Geum-son’s hand nearly clean off and then puts a huge blade through Geom-son’s neck and twists, thus leaving him to die in the same chair his father died in. He tells Geum-son to beg for forgiveness in the afterlife and walks away.

Gi-jun makes it back to his campsite but he’s mortally wounded from the gunshot. He sits by a fire and imagines telling Gi-seok that he should come work with him at the campsote. Everyone is dead now, so he is on his way to meet them. And the next morning, the snow falls, and he’s dead. I suppose there was no other way for all of this to end.

Even though Gi-jun didn’t say much during this whole show, I didn’t feel like he needed to. His anguish and despair was felt with every fight he had and every small victory, which resigned him more to his fate. Do I wish there had been a happy ending? Always. But it is fitting for this show that he lost everything and made sure the ones who were responsible also lost everything. Every action has a consequence.

 
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