Maxance Vincent
Each passing entry of The Roundup gets better and better, but a Japanese-directed spinoff from Eiji Uchida, called TOKYO BURST: Crime City, certainly doesn’t seem like it will top any of the entries that made South Korean actor Ma Dong-seok (or Don Lee) an even bigger star than he already was following his breakout turn in Yeon Sang-ho’s Train to Busan. However, the Japan-set spinoff, which had its International Premiere in the Cheval Noir section at the Fantasia International Film Festival, trumps all of the Don Lee-starring entries, only because of Uchida’s chosen action style, whose intensity gets cranked up in the most bravura finale this franchise has (so far) seen.
While Ma Dong-seok does not cameo as inspector Ma Seok-do, who speaks with his (comically large and very loud) fist before his mouth, the veteran actor serves as an executive producer on a spinoff that plays the hits, but does so in a smart way. Of course, there’s nothing original when the film’s inspector, Shiro Aiba (Koshi Mizukami), has his own version of a “Truth Room” (where he gives potential suspects a helmet and headbutts them to extract the truth – it works), nor when his behavior compliments itself with the one of Ma Seok-do. However, the way in which Uchida brings it to life feels so invigorating that we ultimately don’t end up caring much if the bulk of TOKYO BURST rehashes much of our appreciation of The Roundup’s first four entries.
The movie has even deeper connective tissues than simply playing the hits from those films, as Park Ji-hwan reprises his role as former gang boss Jang I-soo, who has a more nefarious presence in this film as the brother of a notorious criminal in the hands of Aiba, who is attempting to find a corruption trail that will lead to the election of a new Prime Minister. To be honest, the plot is as threadbare as the other installments of The Roundup – the political intrigue is so-so, and the various criminal operations that populate Japan’s underworld are more confounding than anything else.
However, we don’t come to The Roundup for these types of storylines, but for bare-knuckled action and to see a detective way out of his league topple drug gangs by simply throwing a punch. In the case of Ma Dong-seok, his punch has such a specific sound that it reverberates in our chest (listen to it). That said, since Aiba is different, he prefers the headbutt variety, and boy does he butt heads with a bunch of people (I’m surprised his well-designed hair didn’t move an inch, nor did he get a concussion). This might also be controversial, but I don’t care. Mizukami is far more charismatic (and has a better sense of comedic timing) than Don Lee, whose gruff demeanor certainly lent itself well to brief but effective bouts of cathartic action, but less so for comedic moments.
In TOKYO BURST: Crime City, Mizukami balances a note-perfect sense of comedic timing and action-driven emotions, so much so that we only wish the movie had more kick-assery than the limited (but longer than The Roundup’s movies) fight scenes we have in this film. When they do occur, though, man – talk about a crowd-pleasing screening at Fantasia. This was probably the most rapturous one I attended at the festival, and for a very good reason, too: the action is so bracingly exhilarating, so intricately choreographed, that one wonders why Uchida hasn’t been given the keys to The Roundup already.
I mean, a rooftop confrontation worthy of Soi Cheang’s Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In that culminates in a double Power Bomb off the roof and smack-bang into a police car. Movies can’t get any better than this, can they? I mean, what more can I say in this review? Oh yeah, the entire auditorium erupted into such rapturous applause it’s almost baffling that literally any other film won the Cheval Noir award, when such cinematic pleasures can’t be replicated in a movie like Hanna Bergholm’s Nightborn or in the admittedly excellent No Rest for the Wicked and AnyMart.
Sometimes, all you need for a movie to be good is a wrestling move incorporated in the middle of an action scene. The rest will speak for itself, because Uchida’s talents have proven that he is more than capable of reinvigorating a franchise that has, so far, not seemed stale, but a bit redundant. Given how this spinoff ends, here’s hoping that Aiba crosses paths with Ma Seok-do sooner than later, and maybe has a world premiere at Fantasia, for posterity’s sake. Cinema (and Montreal) needs it – now, more than ever.
SCORE: ★★★1/2
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