Roundup: Punishment, The (2024) Review

“The Roundup: Punishment” Teaser Poster

Director: Heo Myung-haeng
Cast: Ma Dong-Seok, Kim Moo-Yul, Lee Dong-Hwi, Park Ji-Hwan, Lee Beom-Soo, Kim Min-Jae, Lee Ji-Hoon, Lee Joo-Bin, Park Bo-kyung, Derek Chouinard
Running Time: 109 min. 

By Paul Bramhall

In a world where it’s perfectly normal to wait a couple of years for a sequel to land, The Roundup rebranded follow-ups to 2017’s The Outlaws have looked to buck the trend. Audiences only had to wait 11 months between the release of 2022’s The Roundup and 2023’s The Roundup: No Way Out, and in my review for the latter I’d expressed that “I hope we’ll get a little more breathing space before the next round.” Such hopes were futile though, as barely 11 months later the 4^th instalment has already hit the screens in the form of The Roundup: Punishment, which sees everyone’s favourite burly bruiser Ma Dong-seok return to the role he was born to play.

The directorial reigns have been handed over to Heo Myeong-haeng for the 4^th outing (replacing Lee Sang-yong who directed both of the previous entries), a veteran stuntman and action director who made his directorial debut earlier in the same year with the Concrete Utopia spin-off Badland Hunters. His debut also featured Ma Dong-seok as the lead, with the pairs working relationship going back as far as 2014’s Kundo: Age of the Rampant, after which they’d go on to collaborate on over 10 productions in the capacity of action director and actor. While Badland Hunters was essentially a straight-to-streaming taster for Myeong-haeng’s talents behind the camera, it’s arguably his sophomore feature that audiences will be coming into with high expectations.

The Roundup: Punishment continues the trend of setting the series closer to present day. While 2017’s The Outlaws was set in 2004, The Roundup took place in 2008, and The Roundup: No Way Out unfolded in 2015. This time around its 2018, meaning 14 years have passed since the events of the original (and in reality it’s been 7 years since the release of The Outlaws, so if we wanted to get mathematical we could say cinematic time is moving at double the speed). The passing of time though is not something that applies to the characters in The Roundup franchise, with Dong-seok essentially being transposed into whatever year the narrative sets itself in to lay the beatdown on a selection of nefarious villains. The only signs of time passing are limited to external factors like characters using smart phones, otherwise it’s business as usual.

It’s the 4^th instalment which cements this fact more than any other, confirming it as a franchise that will stick to the same template (if it’s not broken, then why fix it?) for each successive entry, and unapologetically refuse to deviate from it. For fans of Ma Dong-seok and his distinctive brand of onscreen charisma and action, there’ll be little to complain about, and I count myself as one of them. At the same time, part of me does wish we’d get to know his character a little more. Dong-seok is far from a one-note actor (check out his performances in the likes of Derailed and One on One for proof), however after 4 movies set across a 14-year period there’s been zero character development from when we first met him. Even Dirty Harry was granted some backstory and a few scenes of him not on the job across the 5 movies he appeared in!

This time around the villain of the piece goes to Kim Mu-yeol (Ballerina, Space Sweepers), re-uniting with Dong-seok from their co-lead roles in 2019’s The Gangster, The Cop, The Devil. Opening in the Philippines, the murder of a Korean national on local soil leads to Dong-seok and his crew uncovering an illegal online casino operation. Luring young tech savvy IT folk by advertising under the pretence of a trading company, once in the Philippines they’re kidnapped and forced to run the casino’s 24/7 operation in miserable conditions, threatened with death if they attempt to escape. Mu-yeol oversees the whole operation (in a role similar to the one he portrayed in 2021’s On the Line), ruthlessly wiping out anyone who attempts to pull off the same racket, while answering to his boss in Korea played by Lee Dong-hwi (Broker, The Call), an IT prodigy who’s used his skills to create the facade of a reputable businessman.

It’s the first time for the narrative to be based loosely on a true story since the original, and unlike The Roundup: No Way Out, which came across as a little too enthusiastic in its efforts to have Dong-seok start punching people, here the narrative gives itself enough breathing space to develop the story. Shortly after meeting Dong-seok the mother of the murder victim commits suicide, leaving a note asking him to find those responsible for her son’s death and punish them. Aggrieved at the senseless loss of life, it’s all that’s needed to spring him into action, bringing in a pair of cyber crime experts into the fold (including Lee Joo-bin – Master, Love, Again – in the only female role of any significance) to support in tracking the online casinos.

The digital angle delivers much of the 4^th instalments humor, as the dinosaur like Dong-seok struggles to grasp much of the terminology (upon hearing that the software used to create the casino is open source, he asks the cyber crime experts to find the location so they can visit it before it closes), and the return of series regular Park Ji-hwan (who was missing in No Way Out apart from a post-credits scene cameo) is a welcome one. Also like the previous entry Dong-seok’s colleagues remain largely interchangeable, with his 2010’s era team lacking the distinct personalities of his 2000’s era (The Outlaws and The Roundup) team. The likes of Kim Min-jae (Cobweb, Unstoppable), Lee Ji-hoon (Tazza: One Eyed Jack, The Merciless) and Lee Beom-su (The Divine Move, My Wife Is a Gangster 3) all do their best with what they have to work with, but the chemistry isn’t quite there like it was with the previous team’s iteration.

Of course ultimately The Roundup franchise has come to be about the action, and to that end Myeong-haeng appears to know where his strengths lie, weaving in a number of brawls throughout. The action doesn’t break any new ground, and the “wow!” factor of The Roundup may no longer be there (not because the quality has decreased, but rather audiences have simply become familiar with it), however for undemanding entertainment it still delivers the goods. Dong-seok seems to have made boxing his go-to style, similar to what we saw in both the previous entry and Badland Hunters, and while he undeniably does it well, the throws and kicks on display in The Roundup are certainly missed thanks to the variety they provided.

Mu-yeol’s style comes straight from The Raid school of stab happy action, with his knife used to puncture throats and slit wrists in a flurry of hacking and slashing, and while it does feel derivative, on the plus side it serves its purpose of offering up a villain who won’t be a pushover. Indeed Myeong-haeng throws in a couple of nods to the original through the action beats, with a bathroom fight thrown into the mix, and a finale that takes place in an airport. The latter sees Dong-seok and Mu-yeol get to square off within the confines of a first-class cabin on a plane (which starts off as a 2 vs. 1, with professional boxer Kim Ji-hoon playing Mu-yeol’s lackey), one that delivers on the promise of including plenty of collateral damage, as well as offering up the rare sight of Dong-seok being on the ropes for parts of the fight. It also includes possibly the best laugh out loud line of the whole series, bringing proceedings to a close on a high note.

Overall the 4^th instalment neither elevates the series nor brings it down a notch, but rather chooses to double down on what the previous entry gave an indication of – The Roundup franchise is there to provide a dose of no frills, hard hitting action, eschewing the bombastic CGI driven spectacle that many of its action genre contemporaries rely on, instead relying on the simple pleasure of bad guys receiving well deserved punches to the face. To that end, The Roundup: Punishment does its job just fine.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 7/10