Trigger (2025) is a didactic thriller that struggles to find its pulse
Trigger (2025) tries hard to capture a critical moment in reality where illegal guns, wild crime, and an underdeveloped mass shooting narrative meet all at once. However, it’s unable to sustain that potential for kinetic energy — burning its momentum on moralistic messages instead of using it to develop tense action sequences.
A heavy-handed approach to a volatile premise
The show tries to build a foundation for its story with the appearance of guns in a weapon-free society, but it ends up feeling more like a long sermon than a juicy crime story. With its emphasis on the social divisiveness of firearm presence, the writing loses the layering of the Lee Do and Park Gyu-jin relationship, and as a result, the audience is served a pretty poor retelling of the classic morality play with a lack of strong, conflicting interests.
The series fails to structure and pace its episodes in a way that would make all of its individual cautious tales integrate into one cohesive story. This episodic structure means no forward movement is built and the 47 minutes filled by each episode feels way too long. This leads the series to have the energy of a long boring school safety video and lacks the grit needed to be an awesome action adventure series.
Performance and pacing in the shadow of ideology
The cast adds moments of intensity to scenes where the script would otherwise weigh down the show’s agenda. Chemistry is there between Park Yoon-ho and Kim Nam-gil, but they are (mostly) forced to work around dialogue that moves the plot along and aligns with the main themes rather than the characters’ or their motivations. It could be said that the show misses the opportunity to cover the grey areas of the plotline and instead presents the black and white. This leaves a lot of viewers unsatisfied and wanting more of a thorough analysis of the depths of the crime brought out in the show.
The show may be worth checking out if you want a series that sticks to its opinionated social commentary. That being said, many of the storylines are telegraphed and the show is lacking progressive writing. This is not the show to watch if you want visceral action that is balanced with a story driven the main characters, rather than a story that is more about the message.
