The Roundup: Punishment 4K 2024

It had to happen sometime, because not everyone can keep up the brand forever. The fourth chapter of the unbeatable Inspector Ma's adventures feels a gradual weakening. And if everything is as usual in terms of the general plot, but in terms of presentation and directing everything is not smooth.

And everything seems to be as usual - Ma Dong-seok's iron fists, flying away crowds of enemies, bandits, fights, stabbing, cheerful dynamics and rhythm, but something is not so. The trademark Korean humor here has already moved to the background, giving way to jokes more stupid and more Western, but from this no less fun again.

Plus directs here, as well as on the recent “Badlands” with the same Dong-seok, again stuntman and stunt director Ho Myung-hyun, and he is not a director at all. Even the fights are not bad, but somehow without fire, especially in comparison with previous episodes. Well and there was some sterility and inviting as in Chinese mainland movies, and producer Ma Dong-seok began to push himself in terms of narcissism and ridiculous pathos, which immediately catches the eye.

Some comedy scenes and dialogs are frankly overdrawn (a conversation with the former crook from the third part of Jang Yi Soo about the police badge) - and this is again the fault of the director, who could not present the scene brighter, shorter and sharper. There are no questions about the actors - Ma Dong-seok is as usual cool and charismatic, as well as the villain Kim Moo-yeol, the rest are in the images and look good.

In general, as a one-time action movie for the evening, the movie still works and can kill time, the good news is that everything is not too bad and quite watchable. But in comparison with the previous movies of the cycle it is a weighty step backwards, which can't but alarm us. In the fifth installment in the director's chair will return to the director's chair director of the second and third movie Lee Sang-young and this is already good news, because Ho Myung-hyun, alas, not much dyuzhit.