The Roundup: Punishment (2024)

Fist is still strong

The Crime City movie series has not run out of fuel. I would say that the previous sequel was slightly better, but the tone of this new film is the same as in the previous part, good and brutal action with a touch of comedy. Those who liked this series before will also like this sequel. Charismatic Ma Dong-seok has aged a bit, but he is still the main asset of the film. More precisely, it is his fist that smashes everything in front of him. It surprises me and makes me laugh every time when I see enemies fall from the force of his blows.

An important part of the film are the criminals, who also have strong personalities here, and it is interesting to see how they clash with each other. They also created the best action scene in the film, where instead of fists, they fight with knives and we practically see the entire fight choreography in one shot. As for the story, it's good enough to hold attention, but it doesn't have too many twists and turns.

P.S. for the Croatian translation. Our translator was very creative in translating Korean curse words, so he would invent a new curse word for each F word and thereby increase their influence on the plot, which bothered me a little because I'm not a fan of rude words.

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Improved screenplay over previous installment

The major box office success of The Roundup series has brought us here to the fourth installment of the franchise, Punishment. Similar structure to the previous one, it had lesser action scenes and more towards story focus, but somehow this one is twice as much better than the lukewarm effort in No Way Out. All thanks to its improved screenplay and smoother flow of plot, it is much more cohesive than before, and the digital gambling case is interesting enough to provide a great hook for audiences. The cast is also much more favorable here, we have the return of Park Ji Hwan and his performance is simply too magnificent, till a point he almost carried the whole second half of the movie. Then we have new villains, Hyun Bong Sik is surprisingly underrated and his presence is massive even though he's just the villain sidekick, and finally needless to say, Kim Moo Yeol as the main villain is the ultimate right choice, he's freaking intimidating and quick at stunts too. Meanwhile the choice of ending is a little too weak because they've made the villain look thoughtless given how he ended up at the final fight location, but nonetheless they've regained their reputation this time around as the most prominent movie franchise in Korean action cinema.

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