Officer Black Belt

The promotions for this are deceptive - it looks goofy fun. It turns into more of a serious action movie - great but different.

After a "slight" start showing the star living a pretty chilled life alternating between being very competitive in martial arts practice, doing food deliveries for his dad, and playing computer games with his friends, he stumbles onto an "officer of the law" (kind of a parole officer but arresting delinquent people breaking parole, by force) getting beaten up by a parolee. He puts his skills to use, and ends up helping out that law enforcement group.

That sounds pretty plain - but as he realises he's stopping violent criminals, and worse - and occasionally helping put someone back on the right track - he really finds meaning, and dedicates himself to catching a very bad criminal. Here the action really kicks in and changes from showy moves to really good brawling.

The movie is by the same writer/director as Bloodhounds which was a very impressive Korean series which also had spectacular fighting in it. And like that series you feel the star is really throwing himself around and being thrown around - not just letting the stuntmen do all the work.

There's good supporting actors too - and the "bad guys" add genuine danger to the mix.

Yes, there's some light-heartedness, but mostly, it's relief from the grimness of the perpetrators' crimes. Strong themes of larger community, society and justice, this film really balances it all well; brought me to tears on occasion.

Many fight scenes are easy to follow, but inelegant as opposed to the Jackie Chan type choreography.

A bit of swearing, and I cheated by watching the dubbed version - the English voice casting is pretty good in my view; lip sync doesn't distract.

Worth a watch, for sure: just... be aware it isn't a rompy jog: there's some heavy nasty stuff in here - done delicately and without glamour/exploitation.

Kim Wo Bin is always an inducement to try seeing it so here I am. I really loved the first half of this, it's actually funny and I was positively giddy whenever he went out to stop one of those monsters, but the last act is typically over the top suspension of disbelief kind of thing. In addition to the fact that it suddenly shows the monitoring unit being very unprofessional and making mistakes in succession it shows the guy going full rogue by himself with his silly entourage of friends and actually getting away with it and being commended for it.

First of all why would such a dangerous criminal be allowed to walk outside when the others were not? So he is allowed to go eat outside, they just leave it at that, they're being polite even. Then how can they be so stupid as to be ambushed like that? Then why does our guy go in pursuit of the criminal without his anti-stab vest? It's official police business so he should be wearing the vest. How could there not be an investigation after those casualties?

Then at the end when he becomes a vigilante, how stupid can you be to believe you can take on a guy like that and all his entourage? It's a numbers game. Well, Korean movies do that all the time, but this started out by presenting this police unit in a very positive light so why not do it with them? Why not call for backup when he was in danger, notify them of the criminal's position at least. He could have easily gotten away. Makes no logical sense, other than that the purpose was to create full-on action scenes and make the movie climax using that, never mind the law and logic.

It's half very entertaining, half stupid, but still entertaining if you're willing to forget about it being incredibly stupid.

What an awesome movie. It had a bit of everything in it, comedy, buddies, lots of fight scenes, and drama. The storyline can get a bit dark at times and I was thankful they weren't going too dark with it where it was hard to watch. I'm so happy to see Kim Woo-Bin coming out in lots of dramas lately. All the actors were fantastic in this. They bad guys were all so creepy, just what you need for a show like this.

Let's hope they make this one into a Kdrama series or at least have a 2nd movie. I could see them doing something similar to Taxi Driver with different bad guys and storylines throughout. Fingers crossed. 😄🤞🏻

Thoroughly enjoyed Officer Black Belt ...won't pretend it's not a little high on the 'cheese' factor, but simultaneously focuses on the darker side of Korean culture.

Lived in South Korea for a few years & learnt there was some major issues with rape & although this is a feel-good film, it is focused on combating these terrible crimes.

The fight scenes are well choreographed & realistic - heroes get hurt alongside the villains.

The characters & relationships are also reasonably well, if lightly written.

I'd highly recommend to anyone who is interested in a fun, occasionally brutal & somewhat comedic, martial arts film.