Film Illiterate, wherein the proprietor records movies seen, and sporadic progress through assorted lists of the "best". Originally started after regretfully renting something forgettable for the third time. I've forgotten what, but never again! A tedious endeavour since 2005. Hello. 🙂
I'm intrigued by musclebound teddybear Ma Dong-seok, who looks like he gives good hugs when not unleashing brutal violence. I'm struggling to think of any other performer with quite the same energy.
In The Outlaws, which purports to be based on a real-life gang war in Seoul, he's a figure something like Michael Chiklis in The Shield, a cop in bed with local gangsters in order to keep them in line, and eager to use the state monopoly on legal violence to do so. The local equilibrium is disturbed by the arrival of Chinese heavies who machete their way into the local underworld; it's up to Ma to mop up the blood. Like a lot of Korean crime drama, it's ultra violent -- while there's some martial arts to this, there's also a lot of snapping bones and people being stabbed in the neck.
I preferred its sequel, The Roundup which takes many of the same elements but applies them to a new case involving Korean gangsters committing crimes in Vietnam. Clearly much more expensive, it's got more interesting settings and amps up both the mystery, the tension, the action, and adds a dubious buddy-cop element between Ma and his boss (Choi Gwi-hwa). The first half sets up a fantastically tense closing sequence with a cathartic final showdown -- basically, a great action thriller.
The biggest issue is that these films come from a parallel universe where police brutality isn't a matter of public concern. I mean, there's "antihero cop who plays by his own rules" and then there's "literally torturing prisoners". The juxtaposition with comedy is especially jarring.