Explosive
Summary
Badland Hunters has Don Lee doing what he does best – punching people in the face while being a stoic badass. It has regular fights, a massive bodycount, a decent villain and it moves at a brisk pace making it one of the rare Netflix movies I would happily watch again.
Plot: After a major earthquake, Seoul, South Korea, transforms into an apocalyptic wasteland where everything from civilization to law and order has collapsed.
Review: My day job has been frustratingly busy for the past few months, but it finally is dying down and I’ve been able to catch up on some movies I’ve been meaning to watch for a while. First up is Badland Hunters starring Don Lee AKA Ma Dong-seok; I’d heard good things about it and they were all correct. This is the kind of movie I love; it’s utter nonsense but packed with fight scenes, violent deaths and a massive bodycount.
Don Lee is one of my favourite modern action stars as he’s so believable in the fight scenes due to his build; you would not want to be on the receiving end of one of his punches as you likely wouldn’t be able to speak for a week. I love when he beats up an entire gang in this movie. He then interrogates them asking where the bottles of water come from and proceeds to knock them each out with one punch.
There is a surprising amount of humour in Badland Hunters and some of it works better than others; it’s a generally dark tale about experimenting on children so the goofy moments do jar at times. The moment I laughed out loud is when Nam San (Lee) is about to use his machete on a corridor full of goons, but he can’t reach it which was a nice bit of physical comedy right before hilarious carnage ensues. This movie is a total splatterfest with limbs chopped off and blood everywhere and I enjoyed every gross minute of it.
There is a little bit of pathos with the mad doctor Yang Gi-su (Lee Hee-joon) as he tries to bring back his deceased daughter; this is the reason for his experiments, but he is too far gone with grief and madness to be redeemable and has to be taken down permanently.
Badland Hunters is well paced and Don Lee makes for a stoic badass lead, but I also liked Lee Joon-young as Choi ji-wan who provides a few laughs, but is still a true hero.
Overall, Badland Hunters is one of the better Netflix movies with regular fight scenes, gruesome kills and Don Lee at his badass best. It is very silly and not all the humour lands, but it’s still a fun time.