If you’re even a casual fan of gritty Korean action flicks, chances are you’re already familiar with actor Ma Dong-seok and his head-bashing, bone-crunching antics as Detective Ma in The Roundup series. With guns largely off the table thanks to Korea’s strict firearm laws, these films deliver epic throwdowns where fists, feet, improvised weapons, and lots of broken glass do most of the talking.
In this fourth white-knuckle installment subtitled Punishment, our resident monster cop is back at it, investigating a complex web of cybercrime and illegal online gambling dens. The case draws Ma and his team into confrontations with all manner of tattooed gangsters, crooked casino managers, and even a couple of completely psychotic mercenaries along the way. Clear some room on your coffee table, because you’re gonna need a place to pick your jaw up off the floor after witnessing some of the most insane fight choreography and panel-busting punches ever captured on camera.
Fair warning: This ride gets crazy real fast, so buckle up and prepare to wince a few dozen times as Ma unleashes his signature brand of fist-first justice on Seoul’s darkest criminal underworld. The villains in this outing might dabble in fancy cryptocurrency schemes and cloud storage services, but they’re no match for 100 kilograms of veteran cop on a mission. Detective Ma still trusts his own two fists over technology any day.
Fists of Fury: Ma Dong-seok Unleashed
Let’s not beat around the bush here: the main reason anyone watches The Roundup is to see Ma Dong-seok casually backhand hordes of arrogant thugs through walls, dropkick random gangsters through plate glass windows, and turn Seoul’s seedy underbelly into his own personal punching bag. After flexing his acting chops in a few American productions like Eternals, it’s damn good to have Don Lee back on his home turf cracking skulls old-school style.
And he doesn’t disappoint. Under the guidance of veteran stunt coordinator and first-time director Heo Myeong-haeng, Punishment takes things to a whole new level of face-smashing mayhem. We get everything from visceral throwdowns in nightclub bathrooms to a spectacularly chaotic brawl in a commercial airliner that leaves the first class cabin looking like the losing end of a cage match.
The camera work perfectly captures every teeth-rattling, bone-crunching impact as Don Lee unleashes his signature brand of disproportionate justice. These fights have a flow all their own – more like violent interpretative dance than standard Hollywood choreography. Other highlights include Ma going to town on a boxing speed bag machine modified to max out at 9,999 points. Spoiler: his punch breaks the damn thing anyway.
By the film’s climax, even the most aggressive villains start to realize they woefully underestimated this veteran cop’s explosive fists and thirst for street justice. Let’s see Marvel try to approximate this level of raw ass-kicking action in their next Avengers outing. Ma Dong-seok hits different on his home turf.
A Cop on a Mission
Now that we’ve established this film serves up fight scenes on par with a Mortal Kombat fatality exhibition, it’s worth noting Punishment also makes some effort to bring narrative structure to the table between beatdowns. The core plot follows Detective Ma’s investigation into some illegally operated online gambling dens pulling dirty money through cryptocurrency schemes.
Turns out there’s this startup founder named Chang running the whole racket alongside his psychopathic in-house muscle Baek. Of course, it doesn’t take long before Ma is forcibly inserting himself snout-first into their business.
As expected, the actual mystery solving takes a backseat to Ma knocking heads. We don’t spend much time with these entrepreneurial criminal masterminds outside of them sweating over the incoming force of nature that is Ma Dong-seok about to bust through their wall like the Kool-Aid man.
Most of the characterization goes into building intrigue around this intense knife-wielding hitman named Baek. It’s pretty clear from the start that he’s being set up as the villainous yang to counterbalance Ma’s brawling yin. This dude seems to take some kind of perverse pleasure in carving up an entire row of henchmen without even using a real weapon – the airplane scuffle shows him casually wielding a butter knife for half of it. He’s cunning, ruthless, and genuinely unstable…the perfect opponent to finally give Ma a real run for his money.
We’re also treated to more hilarious antics from Ma’s bumbling sidekick Jang I-Su, providing some situational comedy between beatdowns as his affinity for designer man-purses constantly gets him into trouble. Their odd couple dynamic generates a good portion of the film’s laughs.
Comedy Gold Between Beatdowns
It’s easy to focus on the epic action when discussing Punishment, but we’d be remiss not to call out the lowkey comedy genius flowing through its DNA. Ma’s resident sidekick Jang I-Su usually serves as the primary comic relief via his obsession with fashionable purses and general ineptitude. But the laughs permeate deeper, with Detective Ma himself dropping one-liners like asking knife-wielding villains incredulously “What are you going to do, spread jam on me?” mid-fight.
There are also a few poignant self-aware touches acknowledging some audiences take issue with Ma’s loose cannon approach to interrogations. At one point, the famous criminology professor Kwon Il-yong cameos to essentially endorse Ma’s brutish tactics, assuring both the characters and viewers “That’s what a cop is supposed to be like!” This seems to be a clear hat-tip to Korean critics questioning if Ma should really be viewed as an upstanding officer of the law even as he’s clearly the hero of these stories.
It somehow feels endearing rather than tone-deaf, thanks largely to Ma Dong-seok’s natural veteran cop charisma making his extrajudicial outbursts seem more exasperated than malicious. Much like viewers understand Wolverine will always take some violent personal liberties while saving the day for the X-Men, we embrace that Ma operates via his own personal code that prioritizes cracking skulls over proper paperwork.
All the better to keep bodies flying and action energies charged for the franchise’s trademark dizzying showdowns. As Detective Ma likes to say in his own punchy words between knockouts: “I really need to catch these guys!”
A Masterclass in Mayhem
While the story may take a backseat to showcasing Ma Dong-seok’s signature ultraviolence, Punishment still impresses on a technical level. Veteran cinematographer Lee Sung-je frames the action with an intuitive sense for maximizing visceral impacts.
The camera work glides and cuts during melee brawls to spotlight moments of peak brutality. We get long tracking shots that enhance the choreography then punctuate it with intense closeups showing the damage of each blow landed on some unlucky thug’s face.
It helps that famed sound designer Gong Tae-won amplifies every skull-rattling punch with wince-inducing thuds and cracks. He apparently recorded slapstick sounds like sides of beef hitting pavement then sweetened in bone crunches and face smacks to heighten the fleshy impacts. Between the crisp visuals and booming audio, viewers feel like they’re right there in the fray with Ma to fully appreciate when his hamhock-sized fists start flying.
While the plot wanders a bit, the presentation itself remains sharply executed from start to finish. Chalk it up to a top-notch Korean action production team well-versed in spotlighting their country’s signature brand of uncompromising, face-pulverizing close quarters fight choreography. The Roundup crew continues honing their craft with each new franchise entry.
More Monster Cop to Come
It’s no secret one of the major appeals of Punishment lands in how it continues building out the larger Roundup saga. This installment concludes with some plot threads left dangling to set up a fifth film (already confirmed to be in development). We last see elite thug Baek escaping authorities’ clutches, essentially guaranteeing he’ll resurface with a new scheme capable of pushing Detective Ma’s skills to their limits.
In many ways, The Roundup seems to take notes from classic action franchises like Lethal Weapon while putting enough of a Korean twist on the formula to entertain crowds globally. Much as fans couldn’t get enough of Riggs constantly encountering flamboyant new criminal kingpins capable of testing his grit, Ma Dong-seok’s conviction delivers similar appeal. We can’t wait to see which larger-than-life violent villains emerge next hoping to take a swing at the celebrated Monster Cop and his explosive fists of righteousness.
It’s impressive that what began from Ma interviewing actual cops about real cases evolved into such crowd-pleasing blockbuster spectacle. Now four films deep, The Roundup franchise has carved out a winning recipe fine-tuned to keep fists flying and audiences cheering across installment after installment. If Punishment serves as any indication, Detective Ma still has plenty of skulls left to crack as this saga continues.
Satisfying Fans with Signature Mayhem
At the end of the day, The Roundup: Punishment accomplishes exactly what it sets out to do – deliver another healthy dose of Ma Dong-seok’s signature brand of face-pulverizing action to the loyal fanbase. Is the plot about chasing down cryptocurrency conmen overly complex and largely irrelevant? Sure. But that stuff plays second fiddle to the film’s real focus: showcasing some of the most hard-hitting fight choreography ever committed to celluloid.
By now audiences know what to expect, and this installment doesn’t disappoint on the key fronts. We get truckloads of shattered glass, high-speed fist volleys, imaginative weaponry choices, and enough brute force trauma to make even the sturdiest viewer occasionally clench their core muscles in sympathetic agony. So what if Detective Ma barely bothers keeping up the pretense of proper protocol in favor of expediently kicking every suspect’s teeth in? The ends tend to justify his, er, unorthodox means.
Some franchises start to lose creative steam several chapters in, but the Rush Hour-esque chemistry between Ma Dong-seok and his supporting cast combined with best-in-class action direction ensures Roundup 4 feels as fresh as the original Outlaws origin story.
The film makes no excuses for what it prioritizes most. Fans of Ma’s special kind of criminal rehabilitating therapy won’t leave disappointed. Here’s hoping we get at least a couple more of these crowd-pleasing beatdown fests as the Monster Cop’s war on Seoul’s nastiest gangsters continues.
The Review
The Roundup: Punishment
The Roundup: Punishment delivers exactly what fans have come to expect from leading man Ma Dong-seok and this explosive franchise - rugged charisma, breakneck action choreography, and some of the most cringe-inducing (in a good way) beatdowns ever depicted on screen. The story plays fast and loose to set the stage for serial skull-cracking mayhem, but that's not why audiences turn up. For sheer visceral thrills and two hours of nonstop adrenaline kicks to the face, Punishment satisfies on every crunchy level.
PROS
- Incredible, hard-hitting fight choreography and stunt work
- Ma Dong-seok's commanding screen presence and charisma
- Well-executed action sequences and set pieces
- Solid pacing that balances action with story
- Good humor and chemistry between Ma Dong-seok and supporting cast
CONS
- Complex plot about cryptocurrency scheme is largely irrelevant
- Actual mystery solving and police work takes a backseat
- Story exists mainly to set up elaborate action scenes
- Little depth to the main antagonists
- Dialogue and characters are quite predictable
