So he doesn't bring the flirtatious fun of Jackie Chan, the charming jadedness of Michael Jai White or the laidback sagacity of Steven Seagal. After viewing The Beast, I would have happily made the case back in 2011 that Jeong Seok-won had that special something it takes to be a major action star. With a cold stare worthy of Jet Li and an earnestness on par with Scott Adkins', Jeong matches his bad boy predecessors with his ability to fight convincingly, brutally, relentlessly. His killer punch and rousing roundhouse kick lift this poorly shot thriller from simple B-movie to B+. It's a sordid tale, to be sure: A vigilante must pummel porn purveyors, pig-masked performers, and seedy sex enslavers in order to rescue his abducted sister (Lee Na-lie) before she gets raped for internet profits nationwide.
Jeong's focus is intense; his acting, irrelevant. Despite cinematography that might as well have been shot on a VHS cam-corder, Jeong looks great even when The Beast does not. The military garb, the torn shirt at the hot tub, the black suit picked up at the gym are as versatile as he's gonna get. And while Hwang Yoo-sik's thriller is fundamentally a testosterone-fueled one-man show, I also enjoyed the lead's getaway driver (Jeon Se-hong), a woman who says "It's okay" when she learns a flaky friend's dead; our Girl Friday appears just in time out of nowhere with a new used car to whisk our hero away.
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