Extreme Job duo are back – and Netflix is betting their dumb fun goes global

SEOUL – Wacky cop comedies are the stuff of South Korea’s most reliable crowd-pleasers, a playbook run into the ground by everything from Veteran (2015) to The Roundup franchise (2017 to 2024). The Netflix original movie Husbands In Action locks right into that groove, then leans on the warm fuzzies by reuniting the two leads from the genre’s high-water mark: Extreme Job.

The 2019 smash hit – about a narcotics squad running a fried-chicken joint as a stake-out front – drew more than 16 million admissions and is among the most-watched South Korean films.

Jin Seon-kyu and Gong Myung, who played two of its bumbling detectives, are back at it again, this time as a former husband and a new husband, respectively, who are forced to team up when the woman they married is abducted by a drug gang.

The bottom line is that Netflix is betting the dumb fun honed for South Korean multiplexes will work just as well across the 190 territories it reaches.

Which raised an obvious question at the June 15 press conference at The Ambassador Seoul Pullman hotel in central Seoul: How do you reunite the Extreme Job guys without making it a knock-off?

Jin brushed off the worries. “I was never worried it’d feel like a remake. The story’s too fresh for that,” he said. “It was like starting from scratch, and that start was already a blast.”

The versatile character actor, who got his break in his 40s and has barely stopped working since, spent more time gushing about his co-star. “Gong’s grown so much since,” he said. “I’d throw him a different read every take, and he’d catch every one. The whole thing just clicked.”

Gong, for his part, called the reunion a no-brainer. It has been seven years since Extreme Job, and the 32-year-old has taken off in the interim, headlining series like Lovers Of The Red Sky (2021) and turning up in films like Love Untangled (2025).

“Getting to work with Seon-kyu again after Extreme Job meant the world,” he said. “There was no reason to say no.” He added that he was happy on set every single day, “down to the minute”.

Director Park Gyu-tae was after more than a callback. Best known for 6/45, the 2022 feel-good comedy about North and South Korean soldiers squabbling over a winning lottery ticket along the border, Park pitched this as a sitcom scaled way up.

“My movies have always been about clashing groups and the comedy that spills out of that,” he said. “What’s new here is the action. It blows up into this family-rescue thing – land, sea and air. Watch the action alone and you’d swear it was Mission: Impossible.”

The supporting bench carries its share of the chaos, and it is a deep one stacked with familiar faces.

Kim Ji-suk (When The Camellia Blooms, 2019) plays the tech-savvy boss of an upstart drug ring. He packed on 5kg for the part. Yoon Kyung-ho (The Trauma Code: Heroes On Call, 2025), another scene-stealer who has been everywhere lately, plays a rival kingpin scheming to claw back his old turf.

The women hold their own in the mayhem. Kang Han-na (Start-Up, 2020) as the abducted Si-nae trained with a stunt team on judo throws, while Lee Da-hee (The Divorce Insurance, 2025) turns villain as the gang’s real brains.

Rounding out the ensemble is Jeon So-min of variety show Running Man (2010 to present) as a reporter chasing a scoop and crushing on Jin’s detective. “I’m the only one here without a husband,” she joked, adding that the line-up of co-stars sealed it for her. “Getting to be one of them seemed like too good a chance to pass up.” THE KOREA HERALD/ASIA NEWS NETWORK