The Outlaws (2017)

Saw this in theaters, it was a pretty decent gangster movie. The kind where both sides show a little shades and good and bad. Mainly Ma Dong Seok is a detective and also kind of shady (not a spoiler, shown in the beginning of the movie). He's working in a squad that aims to get rid of the gangs in the city. Gang violence has deescalated, but then this new crew shows up and starts causing all kinds of trouble for the existing gangs in the city and the detectives. The characters were fun, but the outline of the story is pretty typical. The movie just was a ride through a different story with seemingly a familiar background. Was executed pretty well. I enjoy detective/cop stories so my rating may be a little higher than normal.

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Adequately entertaining to watch

Gang wars in the middle of Seoul with police intervention that involves gritty chasing and action scenes is nothing new. Additional elements added is that this movie is based on a real-life mop op operation on a Chinese-Korean gang. Will this add flavor to an otherwise common plot?

As usual with police films, a cause is needed for them to take action. It was slow at first, and at times, quite hard to follow due to the overlapping of the gang members and their turf, but once the cause was determined, it became procedural in terms of pacing and the direction. Basically, the outcome was already predictable. The journey towards said outcome should be presented well, and I think for this movie, it was done satisfactorily. But at the same time, I was bothered for the small amount of tactical scheming present here, and the scenes that they were scheming on how to catch the criminals were not as entertaining as I hoped it would be. It may be due to the lack of a shocking plot twist, that I'm not sure. On the other hand, there were slapstick comedy scattered and I also had chuckles here and there.

Police captain Ma Seok-do (Ma Dong-seok) was definitely this movie's highlight. His ability to play a strong and harsh yet dependable cop together with his magnetic presence in the screen really stood out here. Based on his previous roles, it may now be somewhat obvious that he is being typecasted to play the same macho yet reliable good guy roles, but in this case, no one else could've the role better than him.

The antagonist, Jang Chen (Yoon Kye-sang) was for the most part, able to reach the same amount of energy as Seok-do. It would've been better had the two main characters had a longer confrontation action scene, but still it was good that he (YKS) was able to deviate from his usual good guy roles. The long hair though, was not it. Did just not fit him.

As what you may have noticed in this review is that I put more emphasis on the actors rather than the story itself. In fact, there were quite many repetitive aspects and cliches on action police flicks present here.

To answer the question earlier, at some extent it did add some flavor to the movie itself but that is mainly due to the presence and acting of the main leads. The journey however, was already procedural, and the outcome being already predictable, but was still adequately entertaining to watch.

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