After a job interview, Ha Yoon-joo, a woman with photographic memory gets hired by a police division where she meets members who to her surprise are largely unarmed and don't wear uniforms, as they specialize in surveillance rather than policing. She joins a team led by a man named Hwang, the division avoids arresting criminals and focuses exclusively on following them around to gather information. The surveillance team immediately runs into trouble when they can't identify a particular ring of robbers due to their masks and their efficiency in robbing the bank. In response, Hwang, Ha, and six other officers spend several weeks wandering around the city streets, tagging after people who match the criminal's physical description. When they finally find him, they put cameras outside his apartment.
Meanwhile, James, the leader of the criminals, wishes to quit his line of work, but his elderly mentor responds by sending a man to kill him, whom he successfully defends against. When James's subordinates confer to discuss the next mission, they are successfully tracked by Hwang's officers who call in a SWAT team to subdue them. Elsewhere, James, murders one of Hwang's officers to escape. Later, after the mentor criticises James and is attacked by his bodyguards, James retaliates by murdering both the mentor and his bodyguards. He then acquires a fake Thai passport and gets ready to leave South Korea.
Hwang and Ha both feel sad at the death of their colleague. As a result, Hwang announces his resignation while Ha takes a leave of absence. However, while Ha is doing her laundry, she suddenly remembers how she had randomly run into James in the past. Namely, on the day of her police interview, James fleetingly walked past her inside a subway car, carrying a grocery store brochure. Ha runs to the grocery store and waits there, managing to catch sight of James again, and urgently notifies Hwang and his officers while staying on James's tail. When James walks into a tunnel, Hwang takes over the pursuit, but James recognizes Hwang (he had seen him in the mirror earlier when he was being followed) and stabs him. Luckily, though, the wound isn't fatal. Ha continues the pursuit into the subway tunnels but this time she is also recognized by James and eventually held hostage. When the SWAT team comes down to the subway tunnel, Ha stabs James in the leg but he escapes and runs deeper into the tunnels.
As the chase goes on, James finds himself trapped between the advancing SWAT team and the mouth of the tunnel, which is being guarded by Hwang, who ran the long way around. As James decides to charge at Hwang, the latter, finding himself at the juncture of an oncoming train, stands his ground to shoot at James, risking a 50/50 chance of the train flattening him. Fortunately, the train takes the other branch and James is shot dead by Hwang.
Encouraged by the success, Hwang withdraws his resignation, and together with Ha, goes on to execute further such missions including the pursuit of an international terrorist.
Cold Eyes smashed 2.17 million in the first week of release.[20] After 17 days, it reached 4 million admissions.[21][22] It reached the 5 million mark on July 27,[23][24] with 5,506,409 total admissions at the end of its run.
