Officer Black Belt Netflix Movie Review: There is not a month that Netflix does not offer its subscribers a brand new k-movie. There is always something for all tastes and genres when it comes to productions made in Korea and in fact from September 13, 2024 it was the turn of Officer Black Belt to land on the stars and stripes platform. The feature film in question is signed by Kim (Jason) Joo-Hwan, already author of the religious horror The Divine Fury, the crime series Bloodhounds and the crime series Midnight Runners. With his latest effort behind the camera, the South Korean filmmaker has decided to remain in the orbit of the aforementioned genre, but veering towards the buddy cop genre which, as is easy to guess from the title, has hand-to-hand combat as the dominant ingredient of the recipe.
The protagonist, played here by Kim Woo-bin, is in fact an ordinary young man named Lee Jeong-do – a delivery boy for his father’s fried chicken shop, an avid video game player, a playful member of a quartet of friends – with an exceptional talent for martial arts. Jeong-do is an expert in taekwondo, apkido, judo and kendo and is practically invincible. One day, he uses his physical prowess to help a police officer in difficulty who, recognizing his potential, recruits him to arrest dangerous criminals. Together with his friends and new colleagues, Jeong-do embarks on a promising career as a martial arts officer (a prison guard who does not use firearms) that will soon immerse him in a complex and challenging case.
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Officer Black Belt is a genre and entertainment film, but also socially useful when it decides to tackle sensitive issues such as pedophilia
Officer Black Belt has in its DNA a mix of genres and tones that makes it a fun and adrenaline-filled film, alternating different and antipodal colors with a light beginning and then becoming more serious, but without ever becoming too dark. And with this modus operandi it also becomes socially useful, in the sense that it gets to touch with its hands complex, slippery and specifically relevant issues such as sexual violence, violence against minors and pedophilia. Fortunately for us and for him, the author does not let himself be intimidated by the high level of risk that such arguments bring with them when one decides to tackle them.
Kim (Jason) Joo-Hwan does it in his own way with a formula that is anything but obvious, that is, creating a relay between comedy and drama, between old-school detective fiction and martial arts action. The combinations between the components called into play and the relative stylistic elements allow the result to bring to the screen a hybrid and trans-genre product that, winking at the stars and stripes buddy model of the 80s and 90s, finds its way by inserting martial arts into the narrative and dramaturgical fabric. Not that this hasn’t already been done in the past by Far Eastern cinema, but rarely with the same effectiveness.
The action scenes and martial arts choreography are the strong points of Officer Black Belt
The South Korean filmmaker, known among industry insiders for the power and spectacularity of the staging of the choreography and action scenes (see the sequence shot in the nightclub of The Divine Fury), at the stroke of the hour shifts into fifth gear and pushes the accelerator pedal to the max, increasing the pace and the kinetic rate from the first with a series of appetizers that see the protagonist engaged in some noteworthy and realistic one-on-ones at the right point (from the one in the warehouse to the one in the basement). The bar in this sense is raised further with the scene of the mega brawl in the motel that marks the transition to the manhunt mode that will lead straight to the very notable night-time showdown among the market stalls that includes about twenty minutes of very violent clashes. Clashes in which the action is never an end in itself but rather conveys emotions.
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Officer Black Belt: Evaluation and Conclusion
Kim (Jason) Joo-Hwan confirms himself as a director who excels in staging action choreography, where the action, in addition to being spectacular, is never an end in itself but also a vehicle for action and strong involvement. With Officer Black Belt, the South Korean filmmaker brings to the screen an adrenaline-filled and entertaining film, which mixes genres starting from buddy cop to martial arts action, but which also knows how to be socially useful by tackling, without trivializing or exploiting them, sensitive issues with a significant specific weight. Which makes this feature film a work to watch with interest that combines the useful with the enjoyable, words with facts. Worth mentioning is the physical and emotional performance of Kim Woo-bin in the role of the protagonist, which in the end turns out to be one of the added values of the operation.
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