Review | Berlin 2024 movie review – The Roundup: Punishment, with Korean hard man Ma Dong-seok as a po-faced punching machine, is like a Hong Kong action movie on steroids
- This latest instalment in the Roundup series ups the ante with more intense action as Ma Dong-seok punches his way through a gang of internet gambling scammers
- The simple story is bolstered by brilliant sound effects, Ma’s endearing tech illiteracy, and Park Ji-hwan’s performance as his sidekick
3/5 stars
From the film’s very first set piece, in which the actor gets to show off his near-superhuman strength by removing a massive metal gate from its hinges with his bare hands, The Roundup: Punishment never really lets up.
Bolstered by a brilliant sound-effects team who have boosted the whirl and crunch of Lee’s each and every punch to skull-crushing effect, there is hardly any room left to ponder anything else.
A criminal gang kidnaps South Korean computer programmers and takes them to the Philippines to keep their offshore online casino servers running. Spurred on by the brutal murder of an escaped abductee and the suicide of the young man’s mother, Ma sets off to destroy the clique and its knife-wielding killer-machine leader (Kim Moo-yul).
Playing out like a traditional Hong Kong actioner on steroids, The Roundup: Punishment is old-school to the point that it dares to make fun of its motley crew’s inability to catch up with the times.
Many a gag surrounds Ma’s inability to compute 21st-century IT concepts, such as when he fails miserably to understand why one syncs a phone, what open code means, and how criminals have resorted to using apps to sell drugs.
But that’s perhaps what makes Ma such an endearing figure to many, his instincts to right wrongs by brutal force set in contrast to the sleazy shenanigans of the sharp-suited, crypto-peddling villain (Lee Dong-hwi) in the film.
Ma’s deadpan delivery is perhaps made serviceable also because of the scene-stealing hamming of his loud, long-running sidekick Jang I-soo (Park Ji-hwan).
