Oh, we’re busting illegal on-line gambling in South Korea today, huh? Fine, can you do the United States next? Maybe if this country and review weren’t already sponsored by Draft Kings. Draft Kings: because introverts have addictions, too.
Actually, the gambling is not the illegal part of what goes on in The Roundup: Punishment. Far as the police are concerned here, the games themselves are fine -if, perhaps, artificially slanted towards the house- but that’s irrelevant. The important part is getting the mobster kingpin at the head of this “business.” And to bring him down, the police themselves are gonna get into the biz.
So long as the police are setting up their own casino, why stop at cards? Why not take bets on genuine police matters, like # of breakroom donuts consumed and # of skulls cracked while shutting down a peaceful protest?
While the gambling, movie, and actors are Korean, all the casinos are set up in the Philippines. I’m not sure how that works; is this like how 90% of American businesses incorporate in Delaware? The story here is some Korean mafioso has decided to consolidate all the gambling outlets. We get a taste early on of what the loc
al goons are capable of when an escaped programmer (yes, they kidnap code programmers to run their online casino site — which might also be a crime) is hunted down, knifed, and left for dead by Baek Chang-gi (Kim Mu-yeol, who could pass for a member of BTS if he morphed his badassery into performance art).
Don’t worry, the police are on the case … and, apparently, in the world of The Roundup: Punishment we root for the police, and specifically detective Ma Seok-do (Ma Dong-seok … well some Korean scriptwriter is having a laugh. BTW, are you familiar with South Korean heavy Ma Dong-seok? He’s sort of the Sylvester Stallone of South Korea, and I’m not just saying that because he starred in an arm-wrestling film … but it doesn’t hurt.) Ma Dong-seok was the largest fella in Train to Busan which I give my readership more credit for having seen than the film of his that played in thousands of North American theaters, Eternals.
So on the one hand, we have slave labor and gang warfare. On the other, we have police shakedowns and questionable “ends justify the means” tactics. Hard to deny the suicidal mother whose last words read, “Please punish the man who killed my son.” But I feel like those are the words of a writer interested in bloodsport, not a grieving mother. You want your last words on Earth to be “KILL THOSE BASTARDS!” Ummm, ok. I do suppose it happens. But I can’t imagine it’s often followed by a suicide.
The Roundup: Punishment was fairly standard crime procedure stuff. Only Ma Dong-seok’s larger-than-life persona (in more ways than one) really made this film anything more than a run-of-the-mill episode of, I dunno, “Law & Order.” People watch that, right? Now, if you could just make the head villain an actual member of BTS, then you got something. Until then, this is day-old kimchi.
A Korean mafia ring
Tried to control all the country’s gambling
But the cops ain’t impressed
Cuz they ain’t BTS
So they opted for sting, not fling
Not Rated, 109 Minutes
Director: Heo Myeong Haeng
Writer: Sang-ho Oh
Genre: From the files of Polie Squad: Korea
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Law and Order types
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Mobsters
