South Korean movies are a delicate choice if you are more interested in crime thrillers and entertaining dramas. Also, most of the top-rated movies are either from the drama genre or crime involved in psycho killing or hoods. Although I do not understand even a bit of the Korean language, the English subtitle gives me the impression that Korean movies love to use slang as they love knife stabbing and slashing.
But I don’t have any complaint against them— slangs make the movies more natural and for a killer from any crime genre movie, you cannot expect to hear the holiest words from them unless the criminal is sophisticatedly groomed with luxury suits and perfectly trimmed back brushed hair.
Okay, the above description fits perfectly with The Roundup. But I feel like there are more stabbing than speaking bad words in the whole movie and it’s pretty interesting for a crime movie. Probably, the random stabbing took all the energy of the characters to shout at each other and practice the F words.
Ma Dong- Seok— the man with muscles like a shark is one of my favourite actors. And it’s because his punches keep the storyline energetic and even when you are bored to death, a single punch can bring back the thrill you seek. Since I do not understand the Korean language, whenever I see his face on any poster, I dig into it to try to figure out if it’s a good watch. And man, I have never been disappointed watching his movies. A bit of comedy with intensifying action scenes makes every of his movie a good watch.
Following his face on the poster, I started watching the movie and after a few minutes of watching it, I could tell it was worth my time. Besides, the initial message that says about crimes done by Koreans on foreign soil gave me an impression of a fact-based story full of investigations and actions. Although the investigation part was not dominant in the movie, the action sequences surpassed my expectations.
To sum up, knife slashing is not a thing to be enjoyed by a faint heart and the gruesome bloody scene can make you want to throw up. Similar to The Outlaws (2017), the torture scenes are hard to stand but that’s what fulfils the movie. What started as peaceful extradition of a criminal from Vietnam, it ended with terminating a powerful crime syndicate by force; on Korean soil. The plenty of killing, car chasing, and a bit of comedy keeps the audience attached to the movie for the whole 1 hour and 45 minutes.
But there are flaws, as I have found, butchering with a knife repeatedly with a blood-soaked hand is not a real thing. The hands must be slippery and the knife is most likely to slip the grip. Also, constantly hitting with the knife take a beasty muscle, that Ma Dong- Seok has. But the Kang character doesn’t seem to be muscular enough to carry out the task so perfectly, still, suits him. However, I think a movie full of gore does not necessarily have to ace every detail and that’s perfectly normal.
Flaws or whatever, I must say I enjoyed the movie and as a successor of The Outlaws, the sequel is justified.
poster source
