Life offers some simple pleasures. A sunny walk on the beach. An outdoor brunch at the cafe. Ma Dong-seok fighting a crocodile in a post-apocalyptic wasteland.
The latter comes to us by way of the trailer for Netflix’s upcoming Korean blockbuster Badland Hunters, following a hunter (Ma, also known as Don Lee) trying to survive amidst the rubble and ruin. The trailer is light on other plot details, but features plenty of Ma’s signature hard-hitting punches vanquishing humans and reptiles alike. Truthfully, that’s all we need.
This looks to be a big release from Netflix’s growing operation in South Korea, packaging one of the nation’s biggest (in both meanings of the word) action stars with a sci-fi premise and a director with a promising pedigree. The movie is helmed by Heo Myeong-haeng, who was the martial arts coordinator on The Good the Bad the Weird and is directing the upcoming The Roundup: Punishment, the fourth movie in Ma’s box-office hit cops and robbers franchise.
Badland Hunters is a sequel to 2023’s Concrete Utopia, a critically-acclaimed disaster movie starring Lee Byung-hun that was adapted from the webtoon Pleasant Outcast. Judging by the look of the world in the sequel, it does not look like things ended very well for the people of Concrete Utopia.
Badland Hunters releases on Netflix January 26.