South Korea's annual R-rated violent film, with violent control of violent fists to the flesh!

The first tough guy actor in the Korean film industry, none other than Ma Dong-seok.

Whether it is from the appearance or the movie characters created in recent years, Ma Dong-seok is a tough guy with a full temperament.

Since the movie "Trip to Busan" became popular all over Asia, Ma Dong-seok's acting career has taken off rapidly, and films such as "Angry Scalper" and "The Legend of the Wicked" have made him the representative of Korean action movie male stars, and the "Crime City" series starring him has repeatedly broken box office records.

After the release of "Crime City" in 2017, it broke the box office record of R-rated movies in the Korean film industry in one fell swoop.

After five years, Ma Dong-seok starred in the sequel "Crime City 2", which directly exceeded 12 million moviegoers after its local release in South Korea, beating Hollywood commercial blockbusters including "Top Gun 2" and easily winning the annual box office champion.

With such box office results, the Korean audience's love for Ma Dong-seok, the "cute uncle of the screen tough guy", can be seen.

The box office sales of the first two films, the sequel naturally put on the agenda quickly, and now less than a year later, "Crime City 3" starring Ma Dong-seok and personally serving as the producer has met the audience again.

Without suspense, the film easily broke through 10 million moviegoers after its release in South Korea, and is the highest-grossing film in South Korea since 2023, and Ma Dong-seok has also become an actor with 5 movies with 10 million viewers, becoming a new "box office guarantee" in the Korean film industry.

In this issue of the "New Film Detoxification" column, let's talk about this movie——

Crime City 3

he Roundup: No Way Out

2017's "Crime City" became another blockbuster action movie starring Ma Dong-seok after "Trip to Busan".

The film is adapted from a real case, focusing on gangster crime, and the choreographer also draws on the popular Hong Kong film style of "Hot Hand Detective", showing the process of the police fighting the underworld forces with the violent aesthetics of fists to flesh, while occasionally adding some comedy elements in the middle to meet the aesthetic taste of audiences of different ages.

The most successful convenience in the series is the role of the beast criminal police Ma Seok-do, played by Ma Dong-suk, which can be called the "Korean version of one-punch man"!

Criminal police Ma Xidao is the ceiling of combat effectiveness in the series, often swinging his hand and knocking his opponent to the ground with a punch. Adhering to the principle of being able to do things without quarrelling, Ma Xidao almost completely relies on a pair of casserole-sized fists in the series to deal with murderous and vicious criminal gangs.

The plots of the first two films are actually very simple, although there are police case-solving plots, but the police detection process has been brushed off, mainly portraying the criminal police Ma Xidao using the method of "violence against violence" to arrest and subdue the murderer.

Therefore, the success of this set of movies lies in the fact that the choreographer has achieved the ultimate in genre advantages and made a violent and exciting film. Since the audience loves to watch Uncle Ma slap criminals hard with a pair of big hands, the choreographer will arrange Uncle Ma's scenes of killing all sides and crazy knockout opponents on the screen as much as possible.

Today's third movie, the director and screenwriter are still directed by Li Shanglong, the director of "Crime City 2". Unlike the previous two, this sequel does not emphasize that the story is based on a real case, and the supporting characters in the previous work basically do not appear, and the story is almost equivalent to starting from scratch.

So even if you haven't seen the first two, it doesn't affect your understanding of the story.

Because the protagonist Ma Seok-do, played by Ma Dong-seok, is too strong in personal combat, the "Crime City" series often arranges a powerful and fierce villain, and in the first part, the gangster played by Yoon Ki-sang, who takes an axe to behead people everywhere, and Zhang Qian, who is crazy;

In the second part, South Korean actor Son Seok-joo, who became popular for starring in "D.P: Deserter Chase", played the kidnapper Kang Haisang in the film, who is ruthless, arrogant and bloodthirsty, and can be called the most impressive villain in the series.

In the third part, the director expanded the story to an international perspective, and at the same time installed two villains for the movie, South Korean actor Lee Junhyuk, who once starred in "Secret Forest", played a black policeman Zhu Sung-chul in the film, who is the head of the Anti-Drug Administration to combat drug crimes, but behind the scenes is behind the control of drug trafficking organizations, Lee Jun-hyuk gained 20 kilograms for this film.

Another villain in the movie is the Japanese gangster killer Ricky played by Japanese actor Aoki Takaka, who has appeared in the live-action version of the "Ronin Kenshin" series, in the movie, he is a bloody killer with superb knife skills, persistence and never letting go of the enemy, criminal police Ma Xido this time to fight his katana with his bare hands!

To tell the story, seven years have passed since the last one, and after arresting fugitives in Vietnam, the Maseok-do criminal police left their original police station and were transferred back to the Seoul Guang Search Team.

As soon as he appeared, Uncle Ma taught a few gangsters who were fighting and making trouble in the street as in the opening scene of the first part. Using one's own fists to mediate disputes and persuade the other party is the principle of the criminal police Ma Xidao.

However, Uncle Ma, who had just been transferred to Seoul, encountered a tricky case.

A young woman fell to her death, and the forensic inquest was that she was thrown downstairs after her death, and a new type of drug was found inside the woman's body. The case caught Ma's attention, so he questioned the deceased's colleagues and learned that they had all been to a local bar.

Uncle Ma decided to find out the drug dealer organization behind the scenes, so he came to the bar single-handedly, and after easily knocking out the security guard of the bar, Uncle Ma caught the boss at the bar.

After the customary "friendly but need to block the surveillance" questioning, Uncle Ma learned the source of the drugs. So the police followed the vine and successfully arrested two Japanese gangsters who were peddling this new drug, and seized a batch of drugs.

However, on the way to arrest two drug dealers and bring them back to the police station, they were attacked by a mysterious force. The masked men, who were well-trained and prepared, crashed the police car and snatched the drugs seized by the police.

Unexpectedly, this group of masked bandits was led by Zhu Chengzhe, head of the local police department's Drug Enforcement Administration. Zhu Chengzhe is an anti-drug police officer who fights crime on the surface, but secretly he often intercepts the business of drug dealers and makes a fortune from it.

Zhu Chengzhe sold the stolen drugs to another gangster, but he also provoked the pursuit and killing of the Japanese gangster killer Ricky.

It turned out that this batch of new drugs was originally transferred to Japan through South Korea and handed over to the Japanese gangster "one group" of goods, but the gangster leader "Tomo" of the Korean branch secretly colluded with Zhu Chengzhe and planned to transfer the goods to Zhu Chengzhe.

In order to track down the missing goods and eliminate the traitors in the gang, the Japanese black boss sent his right-hand man Ricky to South Korea to track down, Ricky held a katana and went on a killing spree, and soon found the traitor "Tomo".

But unexpectedly, the criminal police Uncle Ma took the lead and found hidden drugs in the yacht of "Tomo". In order to lure out the mastermind behind the scenes, Uncle Ma asked the informant to come forward to meet Zhu Chengzhe, wanting to lure the other party out to trade so that he could grasp the incriminating evidence.

Unexpectedly, the cunning Zhu Chengzhe used the Japanese gangster killer Ricky to lead the other party to the trading place, so that he and Uncle Ma competed, but Zhu Chengzhe took advantage of the fisherman and easily took back the drugs.

Uncle Ma suffers a lot from the killer Ricky at first, but no one can really beat Uncle Ma in the movie. Soon Uncle Ma recovered his combat effectiveness, and after a fierce and violent hand-to-hand fight, Uncle Ma taught the killer Ricky a lesson with his fist, what is called a fist is harder than a knife!

Zhu Chengzhe originally wanted to escape with drugs, but he didn't expect that Uncle Ma had been prepared and put a mobile phone in his bag in advance to locate it, which found out that Zhu Chengzhe escaped back to the police office. Uncle Ma came to the police station alone and beat up this criminal black policeman who was corrupt and violated the law.

At the end of the story, the one-punch man won a big victory, the criminal organization was swept up, and Uncle Ma went away.

As a sequel movie, "Crime City 3" continues the cool style of the first two films, and is still a simple and rude story of violent police arresting crazy gangsters.

From the first part, the original intention of the choreographer and director is very clear, that is, to make a cool film that fights hard, so the type of police and bandit solving the case is just a packaging embellishment, and the core is to see how the strongest man in South Korea uses an iron fist to complete violent law enforcement!

Therefore, a major feature of this film is a return to the style of hardcore action movies, almost no guns and ammunition are used in the movie, whether it is police or criminals, are cold weapons or hand-to-hand combat, the violent aesthetics of fists to flesh are played to the extreme, whether it is a duel with Aoki's sublime katana, or a mortal fight in the police office, it still maintains a fairly high level of entertainment,

In the third part of the series, many elements have become the conventional setting of the series, such as Uncle Ma's big-ear scraping tactics, the plot of cooperating with colleagues to extract confessions by torture, especially Uncle Ma's failure to investigate and enforce the law according to the routine, which often brings a lot of laughter to the audience, and his fierce appearance seems to be a cold-faced joker-style performance, which is also another major selling point of the series.

Of course, it must also be admitted that although Uncle Ma still plays very well in this movie, the excitement of the movie is still lower than the previous two.

On the one hand, although two villains are installed in this episode, they are not as brilliant as the villains in the first two films, whether in terms of force value or the madness and ferocity of the characters themselves, and the villains are not strong enough, it is difficult to highlight the difficulty of the protagonist's capture process.

For most of the movie, the villains have no ability to fight back in the face of the protagonist, and the seconds are weakened, and the wonderful action duels and life-to-life hand-to-hand combat scenes in the second part are gone, making the movie a little inferior to the previous work.

On the other hand, the story of this episode is also looser, the protagonist returns to the Seoul Guang Search Team, but the movie has become Ma Dong-seok's solo show (after all, he is the producer of the film), so the colleagues in the film are weakened like tool people.

Although the movie has added the plot of corrupt black police "black food black" and gangster internal fighting, in an attempt to make the plot more varied, these side plots are basically designed to fill the action scenes of the movie, but they are of little significance to the promotion of their own storyline, but make the narrative rhythm of the movie seem a little out of control and chaotic.

In general, "Crime City 3" is still a qualified commercial action film as a whole, but compared to the first two, it gives people a lack of surprise. Especially as a series of films that have already been filmed for the third time, it is already a disadvantage that the choreographer can no longer innovate in story and style.

According to media reports, "Crime City 4" has now started filming, starring Ma Dong-seok has personally admitted that when "Crime City" filmed the first episode, he had planned the story of 8 episodes, although Ma Dong-seok is 52 years old this year, he is still very keen to shoot action movies, he said: As long as the audience is willing to watch, I can continue.

As for how long the "Korean one-punch man" routine can be used, there may be a question mark.