Believe it or not I hadn’t seen any of The Roundup movies until I binge watched them this past weekend. So far there are 4 entries in the franchise – The Outlaws (2017), The Roundup (2022), The Roundup: No Way Out (2023) and The Roundup: Punishment (2024) with a fifth movie in development. Let’s take a look at the movies so far…
The Outlaws (2017)
Plot: The Outlaws depicts a Seoul detective’s attempts to keep peace while two Chinese-Korean gangs battle over turf in the neighborhood.
Inspired by true events known as the “Heuksapa Incident” in 2007, The Outlaws stars Ma Dong-seok AKA Don Lee as Detective Ma Seok-do; a tough cop with a good heart who is trying to stop all out war happening on the streets of Seoul between rival gangs. Things spiral out of control when Jang Chen (Yoon Kyesang) starts taking over using brutal tactics; he’s a fantastic villain as he’s truly hateful with no redeeming features whatsoever.
What’s interesting about these movies is that there are very few guns, so there aren’t any shoot-outs, but there are plenty of fight scenes and it isn’t short on brutal violence with regular stabbings. I love watching Don Lee just pimp slap anyone in his way and usually one punch knocks them out. He’s got real swagger and you believe he could take out any opponent with ease. Despite the character’s toughness he’s a good cop and protects the innocent while also looking after his team. He also never kills the villains; he has a fight with them at the end, but then they get arrested which is rare in the action genre. It adds some realism to proceedings and has a very different feel from Hollywood produced movies.
The Outlaws is well paced rarely going more than a few minutes without some form of violence which keeps things tense; it’s maybe a little long, but it’s certainly never boring for a single second. Jang Chen is such a psychopath that any time he’s on screen you don’t know what he’s going to do… but you know it’s not going to be nice.
Despite the serious storyline there are some moments of levity with Don Lee and his team sharing some banter which stops things getting too grim.
Overall, The Outlaws is packed with brutal action including fight scenes and lots of knives. It’s funny to watch an action film with no shoot-outs or explosions, but this keeps things feeling more grounded and it’s certainly well paced. Don Lee is a force of nature and I could watch him punch people in the face all day.
The Roundup (2022)
Plot: Ma Seok-do and his team arrive at Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam to interrogate a suspect, but later learn about Kang Hae-sang, a vicious killer, who has been committing crimes against Korean tourists for several years and decide to hunt him down.
The Roundup is the second entry in the series and is even more action packed than The Outlaws. This franchise really has some of the best modern day villains; where in The Outlaws had Jang, The Roundup has Kang Hae-sang (Son Suk-ku) who is every bit as ruthless. He always seems to be one step ahead of everyone but one of the highlights is when a rival gang is waiting for him and he has an epic battle with them using a meat cleaver. There is a gun used in this movie but it rarely works, so once again the action is mostly fisticuffs and knife fights.
This entry has more humour too with Don Lee as appealing as ever while literally punching bad guys around like they are ragdolls; it is a little cartoonish the way they fly around sometimes, but I just love it. The fact he was a former MMA trainer in real life explains why his punches look so genuinely powerful.
This is well paced with some witty dialogue in between the beatdowns and the final fight between Ma Seok-do and Kang gives us our money’s worth.
Overall, The Roundup is a worthy sequel that has a shorter runtime than the original with more humour but still packs a punch. Don Lee is rapidly becoming one of my favourite action stars as watching him destroy his opponents in the fight scenes is endlessly entertaining.
The Roundup: No Way Out (2023)
Plot: Seven years after the roundup in Vietnam, Ma Seok-do joins a new squad to investigate a murder case. He soon starts to dig deeper when he finds out the case involves a synthetic drug and a gang of thugs.
The third entry of the series, No Way Out is another fight fest with Don Lee doing what he does best – beating up criminals while providing a few laughs along the way. This is arguably the funniest one in the franchise with two scenes that had me laughing – one is the guy being punched in the stomach then farting and the other one has Don Lee stuck on a rotating bed as he tries to interrogate someone.
The villain this time is corrupt cop Joo Seong-cheol (Lee Jun-hyuk) who is maybe the weakest villain so far; he’s still hateful but I found he wasn’t as terrifying or threatening as Jang and Kang from the earlier movies. I liked Munetaka Aoki as Ricky who just felt like a bigger threat.
I also thought the story wasn’t quite as engaging this time around however, it is still packed with brutal beatdowns and I love when Ma Dong-seok enters at the beginning of the movie the cool electric guitars kick in and we know people are about to lose teeth and consciousness. This time Ma isn’t quite so invincible actually getting knocked out which is a first; obviously this only annoys him and it doesn’t take long before he destroys all the thugs in the room.
Overall, The Roundup: No Way Out isn’t perfect but Don lee is still amazing to watch on screen and there’s enough action to keep things moving. Once again, there are no shoot-outs or explosions going for fist fights and knives.
The Roundup: Punishment (2024)
Plot: During the investigations of a drug trafficking app, the Monster Cop Ma Seok-do (Don Lee) and his team discover a connection between the wanted app developer, who was killed in the Philippines, and a massive illegal online gambling organization. Meanwhile, in the Philippines, Baek Chang-gi, a former elite soldier, has been controlling the Korean online illegal gambling market, terrorizing it with kidnap, assault, and murder. His partner, the IT genius CEO, Chang Dong-chul plans an even larger scheme in Korea. To put an end to the escalating threat, Detective Ma expands the operation by proposing an unexpected alliance to Jang, and unfolds the biggest roundup mission to hunt down the criminals, collaborating with the cyber unit and Metro Investigations.
The fourth and final (so far) entry in the Roundup franchise entitled Punishment is business as usual with Don Lee once again punching everyone in the face while investigating a corrupt gaming network. Punishment has another strong villain in Baek Chang-gi (Kim Mu-yeol); he works for a “genius” who foolishly talks down to Baek which as you’d expect does not end well for him.
Now that I’m on the fourth film I feel like the films are pretty formulaic and are at their core police procedurals. Don Lee is awesome but we haven’t had any real characterization for him in 4 movies other than he’s good at punching people and is a decent cop. I guess that’s enough as we’re all just here to watch him beat people up, but the movies kind of blend together at this stage.
Still, Punishment is another solid entry in the franchise with the expected beatdowns and knife fights we’ve come to expect.
It’s well paced and you barely notice the hour and 49 minutes go by as it gives the audience what we came to see. An action highlight here is Baek being attacked in his apartment and destroying everyone; then of course the final showdown on a plane is satisfying too.
Overall, The Roundup is one of the most entertaining modern action franchises delivering plenty of effective fight scenes and Don Lee at his badass best. Punishment has a great villain and the movie still has a few laughs too like the other entries, although No Way Out remains the funniest in that respect. If you’re looking for gritty action and a cool protagonist these movies are worth tracking down.
I should point out that I rented no Way Out and Punishment on YouTube and they only seem to have crappy English dubs on them, so you may be better to try and track down the physical copies of the films to see them in the original language with subtitles.