The Yellow Sea

It's time to fete our Director Na Hong-jin for making a masterpiece like this. This is about his noir thriller "The Yellow Sea". His second film after a bang like The Chaser. The main success of this movie is for it's fast screenplay and some nail biting chasing scenes. Inspite of its long running time the movie tightly grips us during most of its running time.

Coming to story, The protagonist Goo-nam(Ha Jeong-woo) is a Joseon(Chinese of North Korean descent)is a taxi driver living in Yenji, China. Goo-nam's wife went to South Korea for work to lift their family. She promised that she would send money to him, but there has been no money sent by her, let alone any news from her. Goo-nam really loved her and meanwhile tortured by the possibility of her infidelity in his dream, but that is not his only problem. He has lot of debts including his wife's travel fare. He tries to solve his problem with gambling, but that makes his situation worse.The debt collector often visits and questions his pride.

After his fierce attitude in the gambling bar, Goo-nam is noticed by a local Korean mob boss/dog seller Mr. Myeon(Kim Yoon-seok). Myeon has a plan to solve his problem. If he goes to Seoul and kills somebody, his debt problem will be solved. Giving his daughter in the safe hands(his mother)he agrees to work. Under the instructions from Myeon, he illegally entered South Korea with other Korean Chinese.

He arrives at some coastal area without much problem. He goes into Seoul while not being noticed by the law enforcement. He stays in a lousy motel room. He checks out the place where his target lives. He is clever enough to devise a good plan while spying on the daily pattern of the target during the night. He also goes around Seoul for getting any clues about the whereabouts of his wife. There is not much time left, but he still cannot find her. The time is short, and he must do the job as demanded. It's a now or never situation,the night at the freezing cold Goo-nam anxiously waits for his target to arrive at the building. And then, something unexpected happens in front of his eyes. With an unexpected twist ,He is now chased by both the police and the mobs for what he does not commits. The chasing starts, even we feel sorry for the unfortunate things happening to this inglorious bastard in the merciless world.

The plot shines lightly and it turns out a mob boss in Seoul, Tae- won(Cho Seong-ha), is involved with the incident. After the involvement of police and the media far more than he has ever thought, he becomes panic. He attempts to solve his problem even before knowing what's exactly going on. This is a real critical situation, especially when Myeon comes to South Korea after the problem between him and Tae-won. Now both want Goo-nam in their hand. Reminding the chaser the good guy plays a very bad guy role here. Can't see the rage of fight with the bones. That's really a new route of violence. Thanks to the director the car chasing scene is really a nail biting high tension scene, he makes very impressive actions sequences. The camera is a little too running. And the plot changes in to unexpected twists. Overall it is really a worth watching experience. Can't wait for another movie from Na Hong Jin.

featuring the same trio of director and leading men from the outstanding "The Chaser" Na Hong-Jin gives us a bleak slice of Korean life. All of the characters are unappealing and unsympathetic, but especially the violent loser Gu-Nam, who is sent on a murderous mission to Seoul by people trafficking gangster Myun-Ga. But despite Gu-Nams hopelessness you still root for him to survive and win despite the odds stacked against him. Na has crafted a flawed masterpiece from these broken elements, with plenty of his trademarks from The Chaser, like the outstanding cinematography (apart from some of the later chase scenes which seem to have been shot on a horrible video camera) and unrelenting violence. I would recommend it very highly.

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I can't remember the last time Hollywood offered me anything mind-blowing. An industry now controlled by bankers for shareholders, even filmmaking geniuses like Martin Scorsese have been reduced to making pointless kids movies. Not even the so-called independent cinema in the US has been spared Hollywood's fixation with the bottom line, where the few table scraps left are thrown to a dwindling numbers of original voices still relevant. If ever we needed another Easy Rider inspired industry revolt, then now is the time.

With American cinema (not unlike the country itself) irrelevant and hopelessly behind the times, the only option North American cinephiles have, is to go abroad. One of the countries that's long since surpassed American cinema for shock and originality is South Korea. And it's not like Hollywood is oblivious, they're actually cannibalizing SK cinema by remaking Korean gems into pointless American knockoffs. The latest SK gem ripe for reproduction is Hong-jin Na's The Yellow Sea (Hwanghae).

Like Ravel's Bolero, The Yellow Sea understands the patient reward of crescendo: starting slow and building to a fevered climax. By the end of this, we're left with what seems impossible for an epic 156 minute film: wanting more. With the exception of one car chase marred by phony green screen cutaways (see the video below), the breakneck action, extreme violence and hyper-realistic gore is virtuosic. Guns noticeably absent, whooshing knives, devastating hatchets and the blunt trauma of gnawed animal bones provide The Yellow Sea with brutal, bloody and refreshingly lo-tech weapons of choice, a grim example of how Hollywood and it's obsession with appeasing demographics can't compete.

But The Yellow Sea is much more than just a knife brandishing ballet that hearkens back to early 90s HK bullet ballets, it's exceptionally well written and acted with none of HK cinema's clichéd melodrama. The characters here are many shades of grey, avoiding archetypal absolutes, allowing us to identify with and like even the worst of the worst. All of the action is beautifully composed with kinetic, hand-held photography that compliments the bleak color palette, which results in a gritty and ultra-realistic film, not unlike so many American masterworks from the 1970s.

Directed by Hong-jin Na The story of a cab driver in Yanji City, a region between North Korea, China and Russia. His wife goes to Korea to earn money, but he doesn't hear from her since in 6 months. He plays mah-jong to make some extra cash, but this only makes hif life worse; but then he meets a hit-man who proposes to turn his life around by repaying his debt and reuniting with his wife, just for one hit (Plot).

Once again, the filmmakers and actors (the same as The Chaser 2008) from South Korea have hit a huge great film again, nothing bad here, just in one word when the film end you will say wow !, one of the best thrillers i saw in my life, the film combines many things such as crimes, suspense, betrayal, bloody fight, hunts, struggle, patience, pain, sacrifice,car chases and more! I love everything in this film, first the story of the film and how the director tells in three major characters in 4 chapters, secondly linking all the three characters in many scenes and goals (Money!), thirdly the great performance of the three characters especially the(Jung-woo Ha and Yun-seok Kim) and finally directing and Screenplay was remarkable !.

Director Na in his 156-minute film divided into four chapters ( Taxi driver, Killer, Joseon Clan and Yellow Sea) practically wrote about the history of the building of primal instincts, how they get awakened by chance, how they crash with other instincts and the ending to it all.

Had he given more commercial consideration he could have made the running time more compact. The latter half of the film drags on a bit due to the repeated pattern of killings and chase. Therefore dividing the film in chapters to show three people's perspectives from beginning to end is 100 percent director Na's own doing.

5/5

First I have to admit that nowadays the more I watched Korean movies, the more I appreciate their good work with a stretch range of variance themes. For right now I am in a state that I will pick a recommended Korean movie over the mega budget Hollywood flick any day of the week. Since my first introductory of Korean movie more or less a decade ago with the like of 'My Sassy Girl', 'Sorum', 'Memories of Murder', 'Oldboy', etc, things only get better.

And with 'The Yellow Sea' I can't help but to once again utter my sincere compliment. The movie basically divided into four segments each related to the situation of our protagonist. The protagonist himself is a grey character between evil and good, which didn't come as surprise, as many Korean movies has done a lot deal with such a character, take 'Oldboy' or 'I am a Father'.

The first segment is meant to tell us about the dark and depressing background of the protagonist and the motive following his grim decision for the audience to tolerate. The second segment is what followed after and I assured you it will thrill and hold you at the edge of your chair. Very pacey and full of suspense that the second segment itself could stand as a suspenseful modern noir, of which Alfred Hitchcock and Billy Wilder will nod in full agreement.

But I think what followed after the second segment is where the movie slipped over. Director Na Hong Jin (from 'The Chaser') tried everything to provide a decent thriller, but maybe he just tried too hard. The way he prolonged the movie and transformed it into multi characters rather than kept focusing on the main character, the die hard character in bloody melee combat, the car flipping and car chasing scenes which was superb and not inferior to that Hollywood's made, those were all but just not add up to the movie's substantial but rather blurred the entire purpose of the movie.

If the movie is intended as a powerful thriller drama then it surely slipped in the latter half of the movie. A decent thriller drama can not be stuffed with too much action flick I guess. Nevertheless I still like the movie very much and would like to recommend it to all Asian(or Korean) movie enthusiast. Only that I really wish the director made the movie only three quarters as long, stayed focus on the protagonist's gloomy campaign and ended it up the way it was. It would be a dark and a too powerful movie instead.