General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

The Roundup: No Way Out (범죄도시3)

The Roundup: No Way Out (범죄도시3; revised romanization BumJoedoshi 3) is a 2023 South Korean crime-action film directed by Lee Sang-yong and starring Ma Dong-seok, also known internationally as Don Lee, as Detective Ma Seok-do. It is the third entry in the series that began with The Outlaws (2017) and continued with The Roundup (2022), and it follows Ma as he joins a new squad in Seoul and uncovers a synthetic drug ring run by a corrupt police officer and Japanese yakuza distributors.¹^•²^•³ Released in South Korea on May 31, 2023, the film sold 10,682,813 admissions and grossed $76,531,719 locally, ranking second among 2023 Korean releases behind 12.12: The Day.¹^•⁴

Key fact	Detail
Korean title / release	범죄도시3; released May 31, 2023 in South Korea, 105 minutes, rated 15¹
Director and star	Lee Sang-yong, returning from The Roundup; Ma Dong-seok (Don Lee) as Detective Ma Seok-do¹^•⁵
Main antagonists	Joo Sung-chul (Lee Jun-hyuk), a corrupt officer behind the drug ring, and Riki (Munetaka Aoki), a yakuza-hired hitman⁵^•⁶
Korean admissions	10,682,813 admissions, $76,531,719 gross, on 2,582 screens¹
Worldwide gross	$83,410,298, of which $909,411 came from the North American release beginning June 2, 2023⁷
Production	Big Punch Pictures, BA Entertainment, and Hong Film; filming began July 20, 2022⁵^•²
Critical scores	100% Tomatometer from 13 reviews and 95% Popcornmeter on Rotten Tomatoes⁵

Spoilers

Plot and setting

The story is set seven years after the events of The Roundup, in which Ma caught the murderer in a Vietnam kidnapping case; the film places that action in 2015.¹^•⁶ Ma has transferred to a new violent crime investigation unit in Seoul, working under squad leader Jang Tae-su (Lee Beom-soo) alongside Detective Kim Man-jae (Kim Min-jae).¹^•² Investigating a homicide with his new teammates, he finds the case connected to Hiper, an addictive new synthetic club drug.¹^•⁸

The drug trade draws three competing forces. Joo Sung-chul (Lee Jun-hyuk) is the mastermind behind the smuggling ring, a corrupt police officer who plans to cheat the Japanese and sell the drugs to a Chinese consortium.¹^•⁶ When 20 kilos of Hiper go missing, yakuza boss Ichijo (Jun Kunimura) sends the katana-wielding hitman Riki (Munetaka Aoki) to Korea to recover the shipment, adding a third party to the conflict.⁶^•⁸

Production

Filming began on July 20, 2022, less than two months after The Roundup opened in May 2022.²^•⁹ Lee Sang-yong, who directed The Roundup, returned as director, and Ma Dong-seok served as executive producer alongside Kim Hong-baek and Jang Won-seok.¹ The film was produced by Big Punch Pictures, BA Entertainment, and Hong Film, with ABO Entertainment as the Korean distributor.⁵^•² The screenplay is credited to Kim Min-sung and Cha Woo-jin.⁵^•²

Box office

Korean performance. The film passed 1 million admissions on its second day, 2 million on its third, 3 million on its fourth, 4 million on its fifth, and 5 million on its sixth day, becoming the first Korean film of 2023 to reach 5 million moviegoers.¹⁰ It topped 9 million admissions after three weeks on release, taking $69 million at the local box office.¹¹ It finished with 10,682,813 admissions and $76,531,719 in gross, ranking second among 2023 Korean releases behind 12.12: The Day, which crossed 12 million.¹^•⁴

The film's popularity lifted the whole market: Korean films drew 9.41 million moviegoers in June 2023, a 64.8 percent audience share, up sharply from 19.5 percent the month before.¹ With this third installment, the series became the first domestic trilogy to surpass 30 million cumulative ticket sales.¹²

International performance. Box Office Mojo records a worldwide gross of $83,410,298, of which $82,500,887 (98.9 percent) came from international markets and $909,411 (1.1 percent) from the limited North American release that began June 2, 2023.⁷ South Korea accounted for $79,575,135, with smaller totals in Taiwan ($710,514), Vietnam ($665,709), and Hong Kong ($357,408).⁷ A home video release followed on April 9, 2024.⁵

Reception

On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds a 100 percent Tomatometer from 13 professional reviews and a 95 percent Popcornmeter audience score from more than 500 ratings.⁵ Critics generally treated it as a solid continuation of the series formula rather than an advance on it. Simon Abrams of RogerEbert.com wrote that it "does not improve on the slightly refined formula of The Roundup, but it goes down a little smoother and is notably slicker."⁸ The South China Morning Post's review gave it 3 of 5 stars, finding it enjoyable but disappointingly safe, with more focus on comedy and a lack of strong opponents for Ma.⁶ Reviewers repeatedly highlighted Lee Sang-yong's action staging, including a hallway fight involving Riki, a machete, and trapped foot soldiers, as a strength.⁹

Place in the series

The film continues the franchise rebranding in which the Korean title remains Crime City (범죄도시) while English titles shifted to The Roundup beginning with the 2022 sequel.⁸ Each installment has paired Ma with a different foreign criminal element: Chinese-Korean gangsters in The Outlaws, Korean-Vietnamese kidnappers in The Roundup, and Japanese yakuza drug distributors here.⁸^•⁶ The series continued with The Roundup: Punishment (2024), which the trade press notes was made with a more serious tone than this installment's deliberately lighthearted approach.¹³

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026