Tokyo Burst: Crime City

Fans of South Korean police action thriller The Roundup and its sequels got a treat at Fantasia 2026 with the inclusion of this Japanese spin-off film, which sees Korean and Japanese villains team up in a conspiracy with gangland and political dimensions. Aiming for the same maverick cop buddies plus intense martial arts action formula, it falls short of the series’ best moments but still has some great set pieces and is a lot of fun to watch.

It’s a while before the central story becomes clear. Initially, we find ourselves in the middle of a jewellery heist, with the loot subsequently delivered to gangland kingpin Mr. Rabbit in his comfortably appointed prison cell. Unfortunately for the once well-connected crime lord, there’s a new player in town, and he’s about to find himself in trouble. Cut to a busy shopping street where a young man is assaulted by a loan shark and his goons. The fight is interrupted by a friend of his and her two foreign companions, who happen upon the scene, resulting in a multi-party brawl. Enter big-talking punk Shiro Aiba (Koshi Mizukami), who proudly proclaims that this in his turf and begins to fight everybody, pausing only to greet an elderly passer-by who is delighted to see him and wants to know if he’s got a proper job yet. To her surprise, he has – and it’s not what anyone expects.

Shiro isn’t quite a replacement for the series’ unlikely hero, Ma Seok-do (Ma Dong-seok, an associate producer here), but he’s cut from the same cloth, and as soon as we catch up with him in the police station, we find that he’s in trouble – not that he cares very much. We also see him squaring up to new arrival Choi Siwoo (U-Know Yunho), a Korean detective who has travelled there is pursuit of international criminal Renji Murata (Sota Fukushi) and his ally Kim Hoon (Uhm Ki-joon). The clean-cut Choi, who initially communicates using English (though it turns out he speaks pretty good Japanese) is just the kind of man to get under Shiro’s skin, yet the two also have a kind of chemistry that harks back to the unspoken homoeroticism of Western Eighties action hits, and certain kinds of fan are going to be swooning over this.

For the rest of us, there’s great comedy, and a developing buddy relationship that is believable, charming, and, from time to time, extremely violent. In one scene they briefly face off over who gets to be bad cop. Moving from busy daytime Shinjuku to the nightclubs of Kabukichō, they encounter a series of increasingly youthful gangster boys with bleached hair and flashy suits and unreasonable cheekbones and no brains. By the time the guy in the pink suit turns up, one wonders when somebody is going to step in and explain that it’s a school night, but no matter how young he may be, this kid has some serious martial arts moves.

The action in the film is impressive throughout but is never allowed to overwhelm it, director Eiji Uchida opting for short scenes which maximise thrills and never give viewers time to get distracted. At first these are mostly playful, but towards the end, when the stakes are raised, they become brutal. Blood is kept to a minimum but the pain involved is palpable. Uchida wants us to feel afraid for the protagonists and it works at a visceral level. he also knows, however, just when to inject a bit of comedy of the sort that will have viewers squealing with delight.

All this is in service of a considerably more complex plot than one expects in this sort of fare, with layers of conspiracy obscuring corruption that goes right to the top, and plenty of twists and turns. There’s enough meat here to satisfy thriller fans more generally, but the emotional logic of it is simple, so you don’t have to pay more attention than you want to if your preference is for an easy, entertaining ride. Whilst it might not live up to the best of the Roundup series, this is a successful standalone film and a lot of fun to watch.

Reviewed on: 14 Aug 2026