Movie “Crime City: Busan Showdown” released

Lee Sang-young’s “Crime City: Busan Showdown” is the third installment in the crime-comedy franchise starring popular Korean actor Ma Dong-seok. The new film faithfully follows the trajectory set by the previous two: the hero fights offenders with a kind word and powerful fists, and the picture successfully raises money, opening the way for another sequel. Tells Yulia Shagelman.

The first Crime City, then still based on real events, was released in 2017. It did not hit the Russian box office then, but was released on online platforms last summer, on the eve of the premiere of the second part. At home, the dilogy turned out to be so successful that now its creators are planning to release four more sequels, not counting those already filmed, plus several spin-offs. The whole undertaking rests on the broad shoulders of Ma Dong Seok – a former boxer, club bouncer and sports coach, the owner of impressive dimensions and a deadpan expression on his face with which he jokes jokes and knocks out bad guys. These last in the franchise change, just like the police colleagues of the protagonist, a detective whose name is almost the same as the actor himself: Ma Seok Do, but he himself remains unshakable in every sense of the constant.

The action of the third Crime City takes place seven years after the second, in 2015. Perhaps this is a hint that now in South Korea corruption in law enforcement agencies and drug trafficking has already been eliminated, but eight years ago, someone in some places sometimes still allowed himself to break the law, naively believing that Ma Seok Do will not appear after their souls. The port city of Incheon becomes the scene of events – Busan, in the Russian rolling name, obviously came from another famous film with Ma Dong Seok, the zombie thriller Train to Busan (2016), naturally, which has nothing to do with Crime City.

The criminal intrigue here revolves around a batch of synthetic drug, in which the Japanese yakuza and Chinese triads are equally interested, as well as the “werewolf in uniform” from the drug department, Joo Sung-chul (Lee Jun-hyuk), who, together with his team, steals goods from the first to sell to the second for $ 30 million. In the course of this operation, he, along with his henchmen, kills a police captain who was on their trail, and at the same time some random girl dies from an overdose, and this attracts the attention of Ma Sok Do and his homicide department.

They take on the investigation, which consists in breaking into various suspicious places without a warrant and extorting information from the detainees by torture and threats. Neither the characters nor the authors of the film experience any reflections on these methods, and ordinary people watching it, apparently, should be reassured that the police treat only offenders in this way, while those who live honestly are not in danger. Moreover, in the intervals between these classes, and sometimes in parallel with them, the Ma Seok Do team exchanges jokes, gets into stupid troubles and comics in every possible way, emphasizing that they are, in general, quite good-natured guys.

Meanwhile, the boss of the yakuza (Jun Kunimura) sends the most cruel of his thugs (Munetaka Aoki) to search for the missing drug, who moves towards Ma Sok Do in the investigation, clearing his way, naturally, with a katana. Blood is shed quite abundantly, although by the standards of Korean cinema, there is little real violence here, and the camera even turns away from the most violent scenes. In addition, from the very beginning it is clear that under any circumstances the protagonist and his comrades are not in danger of anything but a few scars, minor fractures and, possibly, a small concussion. And this guaranteed victory of good with minimal losses further reduces the already not too acute tension.