Mindless, cartoonishly violent melee-fest movies, even those that recycle mad scientist and power hungry soldier antagonists, can be great fun. And "Badlands Hunters" has lots of ingredients for a successful martial arts brawl-a-thon.

The setting, a post-apocalyptic wasteland? Check.

Comic relief sidekick? Check.

Young, innocent hope for survival? Check.

A steady stream of gangsters and baddies entering from all sides to be dispatched with a single blow or wound? Checkity, check, check.

And a Michelle Yeoh type martial arts badass female? Ahn Ji Hye crushes this.

But "Badlands Hunters" never quite puts all the pieces together for very long. Instead, it's much like the populace constantly seeking morsels of food and a bit of clean water, the fun appears sporadically and, when it does, too briefly. Part of the issue is that the first half frequently sidetracks for small laughs or plot devices that later turn out not all useful. Another part of it is that there's simply far too much invested in transitioning Roh Jeong Eui's young hope-for-humanity from a wasteland origin to the apartment building as utopia/evil mad scientist's laboratory.

The main issue, sadly, is that the big action star in the middle of it, the legendary Ma Don Seok, doesn't seem all that invested in what he's doing. Or at least not very often. The character is meant to be stoic and business-like. That's expected. But having such a character as a baseline really only works as a contrast to when they are shaken out of their typical personality and a fire inside of them is ignited, the intensity ramps up and they get super mad and go bonkers getting even. That never happens here. It's martial arts and knife fighting and shooting machine guns with all the vibrancy and fireworks of stapling insurance adjuster reports together.

Punch. Stab. Shoot. [sigh]