The Outlaws

The balance between two local gangs in a Seoul district is broken when a third group arrives from China. The area's detective sets about resolving it his own way. The film makes the detective as brutal as the criminals and plays that for laughs; the narrative's main spectacle is not chases but hand-to-hand fights in narrow streets. Ma Dong-seok's physique is the whole economy of the picture. It is Kang Yun-sung's first film, based on a real gang case in Seoul in 2004. It was a large box office success in Korea and started a long series. A real warning: the film uses police brutality as comic material and never questions it. Knife wounds and torture are also shown directly.