Defying orders from the consulate, Vietnamese police and their chief back home, Ma and Jeon insist on staying in-country until Kang has been apprehended. Matters are complicated when the kidnapped man’s father (Nam Mun-cheol) refuses to be extorted, and sends a team of mercenaries after Kang, triggering a blood spattered maelstrom of murderous carnage.

What appears to be just the latest in a long and increasingly exhausting line of Korean action vehicles propelled purely by histrionic machismo, The Roundup is elevated to legitimate must-see status by captivating performances and a relentlessly disarming sense of humour.

Son is truly chilling as the dead-eyed, seemingly unstoppable, hatchet-wielding killer, but his opponent is not someone of equally clinical proficiency, but Ma’s lumbering, hangdog anti-hero, who once again deconstructs the action hero with his gentle giant persona.

The 51-year-old beefcake, who also earns a screenwriting credit here, is awkward, bashful, even clumsy, when he’s not sending adversaries flying across rooms or through windscreens with a single sledgehammer punch. Dismissing alpha male expectations with willing abandon, without ever compromising his indomitable presence, Ma proves himself to be a truly unique, utterly captivating leading man.

While everyone involved in The Roundup steps up to deliver a freight train of unstoppable entertainment, all are locked in orbit around Ma’s undeniable star power.