The Outlaws

Ma Dong-seok's Detective Ma may not pack a .44 Magnum or have a sleek Italian firearm holstered under his armpit but he does enjoy instant access to something equally as potent: his enormous, frying pan mitts. Previously, when reviewing his underwhelming Netflix vehicle Badland Hunters, comparisons were drawn between Ma Dong-seok and a heavyweight boxer. Really though, especially when compared to the much slighter, even weaselly criminals roaming the mean streets of Seoul, Ma's atypical bulk (presumably cultivated when the star was an amateur arm wrestler) is closer to that of a pro-wrestler, specifically an 80s All-Japan superstar. Like, say, a Toshiaki Kawada, Ma may have a round, pleasant babyface but his expertise when transmitting pain is studied and adept. In some of the film's most crucial moments we can see Detective Ma weighing up just how hard he needs to go when restraining his quarry. Is it enough to have control of a criminal's arm while he thrashes around on the floor? Or does Ma need to snap a wrist then drag that squealing man around to make him submit? Director Kang Yun-seong's The Outlaws is the first in the pulled-from-the-headlines Roundup series, an opening instalment quickly followed by (to date) three further entries. Outlaws is a lightly xenophobic (not to mention overwhelmingly pro-cop) tale of invading Chinese criminals who upset the balance of a working class neighbourhood with their boundless enthusiasm for knife crime and extortion. Really though Ma's swaggering detective is the main attraction: a brawny friend-to-children who scams superiors and local lawbreakers alike for the snack money that has enabled him to build a body so massive that, and this is repeatedly stressed, he simply cannot reach around the complete circumference of his bicep. 

Badland Hunters

Dramatically, Badland Hunters never raises above the level of a streaming pilot. Director Heo Myeong-haeng's film presents itself as a sort of orphan project that introduces a few too many characters then doesn't really make a tremendous amount of effort to wring their post-apocalyptic wants dry. Anyway, there's an apartment complex, the only one still standing in a city otherwise reduced to rubble; a mad scientist who runs the building, attracting dilatory survivors with promises of clean water and cushy condominiums; and a standing garrison of reptilian grunts who cannot wait to charge at incoming gunfire. Of course, none of that dressing matters when you have the swaggering brawn of Ma Dong-seok to hand. Indeed the pained attempts at character investment that clog up the film's first hour melt away the instant that Nam, Ma's wasteland butcher, finds his way to this concrete experiment camp and starts hurling haymakers. Previously the best thing in Train to Busan and The Gangster, The Cop, The Devil (not to mention, thoroughly wasted in Marvel's excretable Eternals), Ma is a sensational action proposition: the guy is enormous; a sardonic strong-man able to weave and strike like a heavyweight boxer. Director Heo (whose previous credits include martial arts co-ordinator on Kim Ji-woon's The Good, The Bad, The Weird) cues up several corridors filled with human garbage just begging to be mulched by Nam's fists, pump-action shotgun and the saw-toothed machete that hangs (just out of reach) across his enormous shoulders. Heo isn't a one-trick pony either, tailoring several sprier, but no less exhilarating, action encounters around Ahn Ji-hye's Lee Eun-ho, a knife-happy ex-special forces sergeant with a high rise-sized grudge.