When Punchy met Stabby
(범죄도시4
犯罪都市4
Beomjoedosi 4)
dir: Heo Myung-haeng
2024
Hopefully this has the dumbest title of the year until another Fast & the Furious film comes out. As far as I can tell (which isn’t very far) in Korean this flick is just called Crime City 4. This series has had a bunch of different names applied to it even as the numbering increases, so it has at times (outside of South Korea) been known as The Outlaws and also as The Roundup.
This is, therefore, the sequel to The Roundup: No Way Out, and was released, at least outside of South Korea, as The Roundup: Punishment.
I don’t know why the ludicrousness of this winds me up, but these titling issues are way more interesting than the flick, so maybe that’s why I just squandered all those words as an intro.
If you haven’t watched the earlier flicks, you are unlikely to watch this one or any future instalments based on this review, because it’s not going to be flattering or illuminating. And if you have watched the other ones, or are a fan of Korean films where the main character punches people hard enough to fling them into the 5th dimension, then you could, in theory, get some enjoyment out of this one.
When I watched the 3rd one, which, in my humble opinion, is the best one of the series thus far, I joked that these flicks are insane, and that one in particular, because it presents our hero Ma Seok-do (Ma Dong-seok), as a man who can solve every situation, criminal or otherwise, by punching people really fucking hard. And that it was a film constructed around this concept, such that the force of his punches acted as a kind of multi-tool skeleton key that could resolve any difficulty.
I feel kind of foolish for even having written or said that, because this flick acts as a complete antidote to that previous way of thinking. It’s almost like they actually read that critique and thought “good Lord he’s absolutely right, fellows, let’s rein our bullshit in next time”. I’m not so delusional that I actually think that’s the case, but I’m miffed a bit because this flick is so dull in comparison.
The culprits in the first flick were Chinese gangs. The second flick had Koreans terrorising Koreans on holiday in Vietnam. The third flick had Koreans and Japanese crims doing nefarious shit in Korea, and this fourth flick has Koreans doing crimes and unaliving people in the Philippines. Why the Philippines? Why not the Philippines, you racist?
I really don’t know, it’s not like they spend enough time there to make it worth their while or ours. It’s just a location. They could just as easily have used Werribee or Mt Druitt instead. This flick makes the mistake of thinking we, the audience, want more plot, more technical details and less punching. Or at least I think that’s what the thinking was. Apart from a bunch of people being murderised, most of the crimes that Seok-do and his team of detectives are pursuing have to do with online casinos which is probably about the most boring fucking thing I can imagine a crime / action film to be about.
I mean, honestly. They spend endless time dithering over the details of how all this is happening and why, and much of the film involves (younger) detectives explaining stuff to Seok-do and having him look absolutely baffled by the tech speak, and then repeat the terms to other cops or superiors in ways that indicate he has no idea what he’s talking about. Along with that almost puppy dog-like head tilt confusion, there’s also a growing irritation along the lines of “I can’t punch any of these things”. These virtual crimes can’t generally be resolved by using his mighty fists, but then thankfully he’s given the chance to punch the people who control the servers or who know the passwords.
Because otherwise I thought he was going to take up cross-stitch in order to have something to keep him occupied while others solved the digital aspects of the criminality on display.
It’s not like I generally care about what the crims in these kinds of flicks are doing, and usually it’s the same kind of bullshit – gangs fighting over who controls what drugs and where they come from. If they’re human traffickers I can maybe enjoy watching them being beaten / arrested / killed maybe 75% more than usual? But crime syndicates running online casinos with actual dealers sitting in front of cameras in a distant land, attacking other crime syndicates running online casinos, or trying to steal the code they run their servers on? That’s so zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
Sorry, I faded out for a few minutes. It’s pointlessly convoluted and I didn’t care about any of it. All of these flicks have crims who range from loudmouth braggarts to cold, steely psychopaths, and, yes, this flick has both, but none of them get punched anywhere near enough to keep me entertained for 104 minutes.
The main bad guy, Baek Chang-ki (Kim Mu-yeol) expresses less emotion than your average piece of functional IKEA furniture, but he does look solid slashing people to death for either having the temerity to go against him, or betray him, or because they want to be free of techno-slavery. When the inevitable battle between him and Seok-do comes along, yeah, it’s brutal, and yeah, the result is never in doubt, because Our Man Seok-do can punch through reality itself. When he punches a knife, do you think he even feels it, beyond a minor scratch? It’s the knife that comes to regret its actions.
Continuing a tradition of normalising police brutality, this flick also has scenes where Seok-do beats information out of low level crims, but there’s far less than usual, almost as if Seok-do is tired of being a little bit corrupt. Perhaps the dumber way they water the brutality down a notch is by having Seok-do slap around a guy after they put a motorbike helmet on his head. I would think it would hurt your hand more than the helmet, but then I’m not a man who could punch the gods themselves with his mighty fists.
These films are mighty successful. They are some of the most successful films in the history of the South Korean box office. They will keep being made forever, or at least until Ma Dong-seok gets tired of punching things, but then they’ll probably find some other large man with hams for fists to take his place. Or maybe he’s a one of a kind, and can’t be replaced, like John Candy, like Andre the Giant, like some other large guy whose name is on the tip of your tongue. He is getting on in years, and surely even as a titan of the Korean box office even he must occasionally get tired of punching people in the head. I mean, there’s got to be more to life than punching, yeah?
Or maybe I’ve got it wrong and he lives to punch. In Crime City / Outlaws / Roundup / Hurt Feelings 5, maybe he could punch Mike Tyson, or an American president or the pope or something.
Or a rhino. That would be so cool. Not an endangered one: One of the jerk ones that has it coming. Rhino Punch 5, coming to a multiplex near you this summer!
6 times he even punches people through the internet out of 10
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“I promise I will punch them all” – and I promise I believe you - The Roundup: Punishment
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