With Officer Black Belt, Jason Kim seeks to further cement his legacy as a master of the action drama, However, unlike previous works such as Midnight Runners, and Bloodhounds, Officer Black Belt is a movie that falls flat in really everything except action.

Let me start by saying that the action in this movie is fantastic. The choreography is really impressive, well executed, and easy to follow. One thing I really loved about the fight scenes is that there is a dedication to truly incorporating the martial arts that Lee Jeong Do knows. I have been practicing Judo for a good portion of my life, and I watched this movie with a friend who does Taekwondo and another friend who does Judo. One thing we could all agree on about the action scenes is that there were a lot of clearly identifiable moves from both Judo and Taekwondo (I won't be able to speak on he Kendo sadly). You don't see that often in dramas, sometimes they'll use maybe a few moves and then it ends up just being a kinda flail of limbs. In this case there were a lot of moments where we could call out the techniques. The action really is impeccable in this movie, and a lot of work and love went into it. It's fun to watch and really exhilarating.

Unfortunately, the action is really the only thing this movie has going for it. The story can't exactly decide what it wants to be, somewhere in between being about following the law, but also about vigilantism. Many characters feel like caricatures of certain archetypes (like gamers, and nerds), and there are a lot of questionable moments logically. Why does no one call the cops early on? Why do people keep turning their backs in fights? Why do people not make sure weapons are out of reach? Why were there no repercussions from authorities? It feels like in an attempt to draw out the action and to have conflict, there are a lot of dumb moves done by characters. There are also a lot of unnecessary triggering scenes, particularly in implied rape and child sexual assault. Which don't really need to be there. We don't need to see a child in distress and about to get assaulted to understand what is happening. At some point it feels like too much, especially for a movie advertising itself as a comedy (the contrast between the trailers I saw and the actual movie tone/scenes really surprised me).

There are odd tone shifts, and the pacing in the movie suffers from a somewhat jilted story-line. The action really is the saving grace of this movie, its fun to watch which is what you want in an action movie. If I were to rewatch this I would probably just skip past all the non-action scenes and just watch the fight scenes. All in all, I think this is a movie you kinda need to turn your brain off for. If you are looking for action, this movie is great, but don't expect anything revolutionary in the way of story line or characters. It's good, not great, and the action really does the heavy lifting in stopping it from being worse.