The Roundup: No Way Out continues Korea’s Crime City franchise, starring Ma Dong-seok, aka Don Lee. It’s another great action movie in a franchise full of them.
It takes a lot of moving parts to make a movie’s action work. The choreography, camera placement, and editing all have to be in sync, and you need people who know what they’re doing in front of and behind the camera. But perhaps the most important element is matching a movie’s action style with its stars’ superhuman skills. And there’s no better synergy between a modern action franchise’s fight scenes and its star than the pairing of Korea’s Crime City franchise and burly star Ma Dong-seok.
Ma, also known as Don Lee, has made a career of his charm, comedic delivery, and tree-trunk-like biceps. After years of success in the Korean movie industry, he rose to international attention with his excellent supporting role in Train to Busan, which led Hollywood to come calling, leading to his role as Gilgamesh in Marvel’s Eternals.
Polygon Recommends is our way of endorsing our favorite games, movies, TV shows, comics, tabletop books, and entertainment experiences. When we award the Polygon Recommends badge, it’s because we believe the recipient is uniquely thought-provoking, entertaining, inventive, or fun — and worth fitting into your schedule. If you want curated lists of our favorite media, check out What to Play and What to Watch.
His career has reached new heights recently with the Crime City movies, a franchise of action thrillers where Ma plays hard-hitting detective Ma Seok-do. The second entry, The Roundup, was Korea’s highest-grossing domestic movie in 2022, and the newly released third movie, No Way Out, may be the best in the franchise yet. A fourth movie is set to come out in 2024, with many more installments planned.
Returning director Lee Sang-yong knows exactly how to highlight everything that makes Ma special. All three Crime City movies make full use of his jaw-dropping physique, particularly in the way they first introduce him on screen.
