Ma Dong-seok has been cultivating an image of himself as an action star for quite some time. The kind of marquee name who generally plays the hero, Ma looks back to the genre’s heyday presenting an uncomplicated vision of righteous masculinity, a bruiser with a heart of gold. The Roundup: No Way Out (범죄도시 3, Beomjoedosi 3) is the third in a series of films that began with The Outlaws and is projected to total at least eight instalments each starring Ma as the maverick detective his superiors hate to love.
It’s true enough that you can’t get away from the more problematic elements of his unreconstructed good bad cop persona. We often see Seok-do (Ma Dong-seok) beat information out of suspects which the film treats as a cheeky joke in an otherwise tacit endorsement of police brutality that suggests red tape is the reason the guilty often evade justice. Meanwhile, in a step back from other Ma vehicles there are almost no women in the film and none in the police force. The heart of the case is the death of a 28-year-old woman who “fell” from a hotel room window and is later discovered to have died of a heart attack after being drugged in a club and dragged off by a random man who then literally threw her away to distance himself from the crime. The murder which Seok-do is supposed to be investigating is totally forgotten in his all encompassing drive to find out where the drugs are coming from which eventually descends into a battle of wits with a corrupt police officer who’s teamed up with a Korean-Japanese yakuza to skim his boss’ supply of new designer drug Hiper.
There is a distinctly uncomfortable thread of xenophobia that runs through the series even if in this case the villainy is discovered closer to home in the form of police corruption. This time around, the threat is once again Japan which is apparently where Hiper originated though petty yakuza Tomo (An Se-ho) now manufactures it in Korea where he’s cut a freelance deal with dodgy cop Joo (Lee Joon-hyuk) to distribute it in the local night life scene without the knowledge of his boss back in Japan, Ichijo (Jun Kunimura). Joo has also cut a deal to sell the drugs to a Chinese gang, so it’s quite bad news for him when Ichijo gets wind of the situation and Tomo takes off with a suitcase full of pills for his own protection. Unluckily for him, Ichijo has already sent his most intimidating assassin, Riki (Munetaka Aoki), to find out what’s been going on behind his back.
Problematic as it may be, Ma’s retro take on the action star is undeniably entertaining with his frequent hero moments and penchant for one liners. The first time he appears, we see him break up a street fight but mostly interested in finding out if the guy on the ground started it the implication being that perhaps if he did it’s none of his business but otherwise he’s going to have to intervene. Then again as he tells his exasperated boss, his personal motto is “punish and serve” and he’s here to get the job done even if that means wading in all fists blazing without much thought for regulations or procedure. At one point Seok-do and his guys stumble on a crime scene and walk around it touching everything in sight without bothering to even put on so much as gloves.
In any case, Lee makes every punch land and quite literally as the screen seems to vibrate on contact almost as if the camera itself were taking a blow. Ma’s thunderous fists clash with the sound of justice as he all too easily disables hardened gangsters with one well placed slap. At times, his invincibility borders on the ridiculous but he does eventually allow himself be “defeated” if only temporarily as in his miraculous recovery from being run over by a gangster’s car. In many ways, Joo is Seok-do’s mirror, a bad bad cop with crazy eyes who kills without a second thought and behaves with narcissistic recklessness, overconfident in his abilities to sort his problems through his status as a law enforcement officer. Bruiser he may be, but Seok-do likes arresting people and never uses lethal force even when the opportunity is presented to him, symbolically snapping Riki’s katana and then proceeding to slap him seven ways to Sunday leaving the ice cool assassin collapsed amid a display of Japanese parasols. An end credits scene set three years later in 2018 sets up a fourth instalment and the return of a familiar face besides that of Seok-do himself who continues to charm as the world weary bruiser slapping down crime wherever it rears its ugly head.
The Roundup: No Way Out is in UK cinemas now.
International trailer (English subtitles)
Windows on Worlds 