“I really like him,” Ma says. “We’ve worked together on a dozen or so projects, and I knew his action design was immaculate. He puts drama and emotion inside his action scenes, so I knew he would be capable of helming the entire movie.”
“This is my feature debut,” Heo says, sitting next to Ma. “I’ve worked for quite some time as a stunt coordinator, so I think that really helped here.”
The action scenes in Badland Hunters start with basic hand-to-hand combat, then escalate into all-out war incorporating everything from arrows to tanks. Ma and Heo collaborated on the action design.
“On most projects, I work out the action with my stunt team,” Heo says. “We rehearse it among ourselves, and if needed, I’ll call in some extra actors from stunt schools.
“But for this movie I would first give concepts of the set pieces to Don. He’d go over the design before coming to the set. We’d rehearse on the day of the shoot and go straight into filming.”
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“This time around I used guns, shotguns, daggers, swords, machetes, as well as boxing. I had to mix together those elements, and also make sure the scenes were very intense.”
The most exciting fights in Badland Hunters occur in tight spaces, such as a basement corridor filled with enemy soldiers. Heo moved the camera in close, looking over Ma’s shoulder as he delivered blows. When Ma fired a shotgun, the camera whipped across to show the bullet blasting his opponent apart.
“That scene took two days,” Ma says.
Ma explains that although he tries to follow a fitness regimen, his schedule is too busy to work out every day.
“I try to alternate between boxing and weight training. If I can exercise routinely enough, I don’t have to do special preparations for scenes like this.”
The film’s post-apocalyptic setting meant that Heo could raise the bar on violence.
“In the wasteland, the point is survival,” he says. “We could make the action look as raw as the earthquake ruins. It was not something we could do PG-13. The violence came organically because the characters are focused on survival.”
Ma laughs when asked if he has been hurt performing stunts. “If I count all the little damages I’ve done to my body, it would be more than a hundred times. I have gone through six big surgeries as well.
“But on this film, I didn’t get hurt at all. I do have to rehab my body beforehand, try to make sure I’m in the right condition.”
Calling Ma “burly” is an understatement. His upper torso is massive, and his arms are so powerful he can knock opponents off their feet without even making a fist.
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Knight Flower: Lee Hanee plays a vigilante widow in action comedy K-drama
With his rough-hewn looks, he is a walking rebuke to the idea of movie stars as fashion models. Audiences clearly love his gruff persona.
That may be because the actor doesn’t take himself too seriously. You can see flashes of Ma’s humour throughout Badland Hunters.
In one scene, for instance, his character complains about his knees when he’s forced to climb several flights of stairs, leaning on his rifle for support.
“This movie is quite intense,” Ma explains. “We’re really pushing viewers, so I wanted a little room for them to breathe.
“That’s why I wanted to add comic elements. That bit where I use my rifle as a crutch wasn’t in the script, we just made it up on the fly.”
Heo gave gags to the other actors as well. A large-scale fight between two gangs inside Spaland, an abandoned amusement park, is filled with slapstick pratfalls.
At another point, Ji-wan tries to hide in a car when he is chased, but his arrow quiver keeps getting caught on the door.
Ma connected with viewers starting from his earliest supporting roles, such as his dim-witted gangster in 2012’s Nameless Gangster: Rules of the Time, all empty bravado and ill-fitting suits.
After his breakthrough performance in 2016’s Train to Busan, he started to take on more complicated parts than are usually found in genre films.
“I’m not a good person, I have blood on my hands,” his character confesses at one point in Badland Hunters.
“That scene was supposed to be longer, but we edited it,” Ma explains. “It may not be totally clear, but he has a daughter who died before the movie starts. If there’s a sequel, we’ll have more time to show his backstory.
“Characters who have flaws, who have problems, are really important to me. In a movie you don’t have much time to learn about a character, so it’s important to give them some depth.
“That’s the only way viewers can put themselves in the character’s shoes, really feel what he feels. I always want to convey that depth, and do it in a very clear-cut, simple way.”
Ma and Heo’s next collaboration, The Roundup: Punishment, marks the fourth entry in that series. It will premiere in February at the Berlin International Film Festival.
Badland Hunters will start streaming on Netflix on January 26.