The Roundup: No Way Out

 Well, it only took two sequels for the Crime City series (seemingly renamed to The Roundup in the west, despite the first one lacking that title) to become a parody of itself. This is a problem when the series didn't take itself that seriously from the beginning.

 This time around the threat is a rogue group of Yakuza who've stolen a batch of a deadly new designer drug dubbed Hyper from Japan, and are prepping to put it out on the streets. They're protected by the police chief in Incheon (Lee Joon-hyuk), a silent partner in their drug trade, but things get complicated when headquarters back in Japan realize what's going on and send a small army of thugs led by katana-wielding Rikki (Munetaka Aoki) to kill everyone involved and take back the mechandise.

 Unluckily for all of them, Ma Seok-do (Ma Dong Seok/Don Lee) of the metropolitan police and his team of hangers-on are on the case and working their way up the crime chain.

 I really liked the previous films mostly due to how they balanced gritty cop drama with Ma Seok-do's outsized  comedic persona. He's basically the only adult in a world of eight-year olds, slapping both thugs and the law around until things fall into place, but they worked like eighties cop movies in that respect.

 The Roundup: No Way Out exaggerates that aspect even more and amps up the comedy and action until there's no sense of threat. Don Lee's basically a superhero at this point: infallible, unbreakable and possessed of superhuman strength; His punches now regularly send people flying through walls and at one point he knocks a thug unconscious with an open-handed slap.

 At the same time the plot he's up against is a bit murky and overstuffed with characters. It woks... kinda, but it's nowhere near as compelling as the previous movies' cases. And the pacing is a bit repetitive, falling back on Don Lee arriving, kicking everyone's ass, then finding the clue that will lead to the next throwdown, or cutting to internecine fights between the criminals.

 The action is all right, as always - the choreographies tend toward the basic but it's clear, often funny, and it's full of good stunts. Don Lee's presence helps a lot, his boxer training, bulk and charisma lending credence to his physical threat, and his weary 'can you believe this shit?' expression is always funny.

 The comedy is a bit more unreliable; A new character (Jeon Seok-ho, I think) scores quite a few laughs as a criminal-turned-informant who gets a little too into helping the police, and the few times the movie dares poke fun at Don Lee are pretty funny as well. Less successful: all the bits where the police gleefully roll their eyes at due process and ethics - there's yet another scene where the police cover up the cameras in their (much nicer, this time around) office so they can engage in some police brutality with a suspect, which has become a running gag in these films.

 Later on there's a scene with the Yakuza brutally beating one of their own for information, and I wasn't sure how I was meant to feel - I mean, it played very similar to the police scene before, only people weren't smiling and the music was menacing. I know it's tiresome to bring this up, it's a fantasy where the police are infallible, yadda yadda, but... screw this shit.

 Things have now become untethered enough from reality that the movie loses the sense of danger that the previous installments managed to still hold on to. Either that, or the formula's grown stale for me. It's still watchable - returning director Lee Sang-yong knows how to make slick entertainment - but if I have to be honest, I'm way less interested in seeing where Don Lee and his crew head on next.