O Agente Faixa-Preta

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.

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.

This movie feels a bit like it was meant to be the pilot of a series. It's well executed and as some nicely choreographed and filmed action sequences and in between some goofy humor. This humor makes the overall tone rather lighthearted despite the serious topics that are touched.

The only grief I have with this movie is the quite stupid decisions the characters repeatedly make.

Very mild spoilers follow.

The biggest one being that the protagonist keeps on ignoring supposedly knocked down enemies to look the other way and (of course) being attacked from behind. This happens (if I recall correctly) a total of four of five times, which was a bit annoying. At other times the only answer to why a decision was made can be "so the fight scene can happen". If the writing in these situations was a bit better, the movie would have been much more enjoyable. It was still a fun and entertaining experience that can and doesn't want to be taken too seriously.

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.

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. 😄🤞🏻