Rating: NR | Runtime: 109 minutes
Release Date: April 24th, 2024 (South Korea) / May 3rd, 2024 (USA)
Studio: ABO Entertainment / Capelight Pictures International
Director(s): Heo Myeong-haeng
Writer(s): Oh Sang-ho

Fear was never written into his genes.

When Ma Seok-do (Don Lee aka Ma Dong-seok) makes a promise, he intends to keep it. So, even though the homicide he was assigned to solve finds itself bleeding into a cyber-crime case (a topic of which he knows comically little), Detective Ma refuses to take “No” for an answer whether it’s delivered by his captain, deputy, or the commissioner himself. He’ll trick them all into letting him stay on and set-up a task force with people who do know what a cloud server is and maybe even enlist long-time criminal whipping boy Jang Yi-soo (Park Ji-hwan) to help.

If you’ve seen any of the other films from this franchise and enjoyed them, The Roundup: Punishment delivers on their promise. Helmed by former stunt coordinator Heo Myeong Haeng and written by Sang-ho Oh (both newcomers to the series), the result shows the formula is impossible to screw-up. And if the idea is to truly keep doing a new one every year (The Roundup came out in 2022 and No Way Out in 2023 after the original film, The Outlaws, bowed in 2017), you must recruit new filmmakers to hit the ground running each time. As long as Don Lee is at the center throwing punches, botching pep talks, and protecting innocent civilians, people will keep buying tickets.

I won’t lie, though. Besides remembering that one of the previous two installments takes the gang to Vietnam, they do all kind of bleed together. There’s humor as Ma dupes his bosses and cajoles criminals to his aid. There’s usually a long knife fight in a tight space. And, of course, a stone-cold killer ready for a comeuppance. That the plot always seems to work effectively (if forgettably) almost becomes an added bonus to the vibes and action. I could tell you about the villains (Kim Mu-yeol’s Baek and Lee Dong-hwi’s Chang are the cutthroat muscle and hubristic brains behind an online casino ring respectively), but it wouldn’t sell you on anything. You’re either already excited by the brand or not.

Just know that Ma won’t let you down either. This one might be the tamest so far (I still haven’t seen The Outlaws), but it’s still a lot of fun. Park Ji-hwan steals the show. Kim Mu-yeol is brutally menacing. And Don Lee is having a blast. The cyber-crime stuff is superficial with buzzword mentions of cryptocurrency and apps—a thin veneer atop an otherwise routine investigation to smoke out its perpetrators—but its presence as a way to walk Ma into easy jokes about his troglodyte relationship with technology is worth it. As Captain Jang (Lee Beom-soo) jokes, Ma’s fist isn’t digital. It’s not going to be punching anyone online. So, let Lee Joo-bin’s Han handle the computers and keep Ma on the streets to shatter sternums.

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Don Lee aka Ma Dong-seok (holding the phone) and his fellow officers in THE ROUND-UP: PUNISHMENT; courtesy of Blue Fox Entertainment.