Having had no emotional investment in Marvel Comics since I was 10 I have little to say about the Marvel Cinematic Universe that’s critically meaningful, since the whole point of the MCU is stoking established fans’ passions for the various characters and situations it embraces. But approaching this latest attempt to exploit the so-called Spider-verse I found myself at a loss to even understand what the appeal was supposed to be since the story was filled with shaded connections to other points of entry into the Spider-verse that I couldn’t figure out. For instance, the opening scene involves a pregnant entomologist (Kerry Bishé) visiting the jungles of Peru in 1973 to study a rare spider. So far, so good, because it’s obviously going to be about spiders. This sequence is followed by some fast-paced action centered on paramedic Cassie Webb (Dakota Johnson), who we eventually learn was the unborn child in the entomologist’s womb, involved in a treacherous rescue operation when she has a flash of the near future. Of course, the viewer is meant to make the connection that whatever the spider in the Amazon imparted to her mother is now being manifested in Cassie, but the director, S.J. Clarkson, and her writers don’t seem to know what to do with it, and end up traveling a conventional thriller route with off ramps to the Spider-verse that are too confusing to make an impression. 

The villain, Ezekiel (Tahar Rahim), who was also present during the Peru sequence, seems to be from another dimension in the Spider-verse and dresses like a wannabe Spider-man. He also possesses precognitive abilities and is after three young women (Celeste O’Connor, Syndney Sweeney, Isabela Merced) who will one day become Spider-women and presumably destroy him, so he’s trying to nip their Spideyness in the bud by killing them. But Cassie figures this out and endeavors to protect them after she sees their future when they occupy the same subway car. What ensues is a convoluted cat-and-mouse chase that needs either more explication or less, but in any case it never clarifies its relationship to the Spider-verse and its reason for existing as a movie, unless, of course, it all gets explained more thoroughly in a future sequel, which, I’m sure, has already been planned. But as I said earlier, I have no investment in the MCU so I can only enjoy the component films if they stand alone as integrated entertainments (FWIW, I thoroughly enjoyed the two animated Spider-verse films), and this one seems to require a leap of imagination that I can’t conjure. Even the action scenes, while less dependent on CGI than most movies of its ilk, contain too much incoherent pyrotechnic spectacle at the expense of mano-a-mano fighting. When I realized that the climactic free-for-all was taking place in front of a giant Pepsi sign, I finally understood what the film’s real priorities were.

The universe represented by the Korean cinematic crime series, The Roundup, is much less elaborate than the MCU, but it has its distinctions, which nevertheless remind the viewer that it isn’t the universe we live in. For one thing, there’s the cavalier attitude toward violence. Just as the proverbial narrative-based porn flick is required to have a sex scene every 5-10 minutes, in The Roundup films, police detective Ma Suk-do (Ma Dong-seok) is required to get into a fist fight with multiple bad guys every time he turns a corner, totally destroying his opponents in the process while suffering only the most superficial cuts and bruises. The fact that Ma never loses any of these fights (though, as the movies progress, he usually faces tougher opponents so that the fights last longer) would seem to work against the series as a whole, but The Roundup movies have been consistent winners in Korea during a post-pandemic box office slump. And that’s simply because Ma Dong-seok (or Don Lee, the name he uses for Western markets) is just too charming a bulked-up action star to resist.

Consequently, the best thing I can say about No Way Out, the third installment, is that it’s just more of the same, even if Ma’s usual goofball team of colleagues has been changed up owing to the fact that the action takes place 7 years after that of the last film for reasons I couldn’t care less about. The story is somewhat less compelling than the ones that anchored the first two. A loose federation of drug dealers handling Japanese product decide to double cross one another while also sticking it to a yakuza organization headed by Ichizo, played by Korea’s favorite movie Japanese bad guy, Jun Kunimura, but only in a few short scenes. Ichizo’s main operative on the peninsula is Ricky (Munetaka Aoki), whose brief is just to kill anyone he wants to, preferably with a sword. The ringer is a Seoul detective working for another precinct, Joo Seong-cheol (Lee Jun-hyuk), who heads one of the drug distribution organizations and means to corner the market on this particular synthetic narcotic, mainly by playing a possible Chinese connection against the other groups, including the Japanese.

The most refreshing thing about The Roundup is its relative paucity of guns, which I suppose means that it does have a connection to the universe we live in since Korean cops, like Japanese police officers, possess guns but are not encouraged to use them as much as their Western counterparts do. I know it’s a small thing, but when it comes to action movies that aspire to the kind of comic simplicity that Ma embodies, I take comfort in being able to understand everything that’s going on in a particular universe, where consistency counts for everything. I hear the next installment is out this summer. 

Madame Web now playing in Tokyo at Toho Cinemas Nihonbashi (050-6868-5060), Toho Cinemas Hibiya (050-6868-5068), Marunouchi Piccadilly (050-6875-0075), 109 Cinemas Premium Shinjuku (0570-060-109), Shinjuku Wald 9 (03-5369-4955), Shinjuku Piccadilly (050-6861-3011), Toho Cinemas Shinjuku (050-6868-5063), Toho Cinemas Shibuya (050-6868-5002), Toho Cinemas Roppongi Hills (050-6868-5024). 

The Roundup: No Way Out in Korean, Japanese and Mandarin. Now playing in Tokyo at Marunouchi Toei (03-3535-4741), Shinjuku Piccadilly (050-6861-3011).

Madame Web home page in Japanese

The Roundup: No Way Out home page in Japanese

Madame Web photo (c) 2024 Marvel

The Roundup: No Way Out photo (c) Bigpunch Pictures & Hong Kong Film & B.A. Entertainment