\u201cThe Roundup: Punishment\u201d is the third sequel in a series of Korean cop thrillers featuring a tank-sized boxer nicknamed the \u201cmonster cop.\u201d Somehow, these movies aren\u2019t as fun as that suggests. Ma Dong-seok, aka Don Lee, plays Seok-do, the only memorable constant in this episodic action franchise, which began in 2017 with the hit \u201cThe Outlaws.\u201d In the last three movies, Seok-do punched bad guys across the room and smashed through whatever physical obstacles stood in his way. Because what else are you going to do with a guy who looks like Benjamin Grimm\u2019s second cousin?<\/p>\n
Lee wasn\u2019t as<\/em> big of a star in 2017, especially not outside of Asia, so it\u2019s unsurprising that the tone of the first two sequels toggle wildly between unfortunately broad police comedy and bloody, generic crime drama. Somehow, each new \u201cThe Roundup\u201d installment has simultaneously relied more on Lee\u2019s presence and less on his gifts. He still pummels bad guys in \u201cThe Roundup: Punishment,\u201d about an online casino and a handful of grisly murders. But Lee\u2019s still not only in not enough scenes, but sadly, he also doesn\u2019t get to show off his knack for physical comedy. <\/p>\n Seok-do remains part of a team of otherwise forgettable police officers. They abide by the law, get cheesed off by violent criminals, and always get their men. They\u2019re not quite M Squad nor the Sweeney, but they do<\/em> have a monster cop on their team, and that\u2019s sometimes enough. When Lee\u2019s not on-screen, these movies are all about their villains, desperate crooks who are usually Korean but still don\u2019t quite fit in anywhere.\u00a0<\/p>\n This movie\u2019s broody antagonist is Baek Chang-ki (Kim Mu-yeol), a chilly ex-mercenary who runs an online casino in the Philippines. Baek inevitably finds himself at odds with his business partners, led by the weaselly IT prodigy Chang Dong-cheol (Lee Dong-hwi). Baek also ruthlessly stabs one of his casino\u2019s (literally) captive employees to death. That puts Baek at odds with Seok-do, who makes a promise to the victim\u2019s mother (who dies almost instantly)\u2014he will punish whoever\u2019s responsible. <\/p>\n There are ways to dress up such a stock plot without taking viewers too far afield of, say, action or chase scenes, most of which are polished but unremarkable. But the makers of \u201cThe Roundup: Punishment\u201d don\u2019t seem to care enough to make their latest procedural seem personal. Without spoiling anything: nothing in this movie really suggests a strong emotional connection between Seok-do and the people he says that he\u2019s fighting for. There\u2019s also not much to latch onto during scenes where Chang acts like a snotty bigshot, mainly because his dialogue isn\u2019t juicy enough to make you want to root against him. At least Baek never over-promises in his scenes; he glares, he stabs, he kills. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cThe Roundup: Punishment\u201d is the third sequel in a series of Korean cop thrillers featuring a tank-sized boxer nicknamed the \u201cmonster cop.\u201d Somehow, these movies aren\u2019t as fun as that suggests. Ma Dong-seok, aka Don Lee, plays Seok-do, the only memorable constant in this episodic action franchise, which began in 2017 with the hit \u201cThe …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[36,50,45],"class_list":["post-1169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-action-movies","tag-action","tag-crime","tag-drama"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1169\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}