Yesterday

Asian cinema has progressed in many ways. Nowadays the production values of for instance South Korean films are almost as high as for standard Hollywood-fare. But still there is some way to go before the quality in all aspects rise up to what we've become accustomed to.

"Yesterday" is basically your standard Asian techno-thriller. Flashy visuals, nice special effects and flawless technical quality throughout. But like many other Asian movies i feel the script would have needed another run-through. The story of missing children being used for experimental research, and the connections to modern-day homicides, is just too messy. I never got a feel for the characters, never got a feel for the story. Also the actors feel a bit low on expressions, which doesn't really contribute when i already had trouble feeling anything at all about the movie. Simply put, this is not engaging enough.

And another problem that is also tied to the script is the fact that the movie is overly long. At just over two hours it stretches the script very thin. Since there are a few really nice action scenes, and a lot of promise in the visuals and general stylish look of the movie, i would like to see a more compressed story. Maybe twenty minutes shorter and some of the slower less meaningful scenes could have been cut out. In general i think both pace and story would have benefited from that.

In the end this movie failed to excite me. While it looked nice (and sounded nice) it didn't have much to offer in the way of plot or character development. And in the end nice visuals and a hefty budget is not enough to keep me entertained for over two hours. With a better script and less drawn-out filling scenes this could have been good. Now it's hardly mediocre. I rate it 4/10.

It begins with a action-filled sequence that really wakes your interest and curiosity, but the questions that arise in the beginning doesn't get answered, only more and more questions and that is very annoying. The first hour is spent not knowing a lot at a very high speed, and the rest of the film has too many slow spots where the background and the plot is revealed only by dialog, breaking the tempo and flow down to a very low pace.

At several times I wondered whether I really began watching at the beginning, or if this was a sequel to a film where all the characters were introduced... Although, refreshing to see a Korean film, not a complete waste.

it seems south korea has become the major market for good, fun action movies. we've seen a couple of good ones since "shiri" came along. "yesterday" is no exception. tight, powerful action sequences bound together by a futuristic plot, with art direction a la "blade runner" make this movie a contender for one of the best action films of the past years. "yesterday" has the sense to be contemporary, thrilling and without resolving to unnecessary subplots - it is clean, pure fun. lovers of asian action cinema- you will not be disappointed!!!

Set in the not so distant future on the Korean Peninsula, Yesterday tells a crime thriller story. The chief of the police gets kidnapped right in front of his daughter. A special investigations unit is put on the case and slowly an old mystery starts to emerge, as well as a mysterious link between the daughter and the leader of the SI unit.

The biggest problem this film has is its utter incapability to engage its viewers. Things happen on the screen, but you're constantly lost in time and space. Scenes don't flow smoothly from one to another, you're never quite sure where anything is happening. The dialogues are also more than a bit stunted and none of the characters are given any meaningful backstory. Most of them are there to look cool and pull off stunts. The two main leads (played by Seung-woo Kim and Yunjin Kim) have to be given something, but even that is so cardboard textbook that you instantly file it away and forget about it.

And actually, that's another huge problem. It's been a few days after I saw the film and I literally had to go and read the plot summary to even remember what this movie was about. I can remember four characters (the film had dozens all told), perhaps a scene or two, and after reading the summary, I'm sort of clear on what happened. Can't remember the ending at all, though.

If I had to find one thing to praise... The special effects were okay, as were some of the stunts, the first scene had some promise and it honestly looked like some of the actors were honestly trying. The script just wouldn't let them.

So yeah, hard skip for this one.

If you fully understand the complexities of the plot of `Yesterday,' a new Korean sci-fi action movie, you deserve some sort of medal.

I'll try my best, though. There is a serial killer on the loose killing scientists. This leads to an investigation led by Seok (Seung-woo Kim), who accidentally shoots his kidnapped son, who was trying to escape the clutches of the killer. Later, the chief of police is kidnapped, and her daughter joins in the investigation. She is well trained and ambitious, like Clarice Starling without the emotion.

That is only the film's set up. Later (or earlier. or somewhere along the line) we are introduced to the concept of cloning, and the rights of the clones. This concept, as well as the visual appearance of the futuristic city that the film takes place in, is inspired, to say the least, by `Blade Runner,' which had androids instead of clones.

The film is directed by Yun-Su Jeon, a man with a good eye for visuals; the film looks fine. The problem with the film, it seems, is it tries to do to much; there is a lot of action, shooting and explosions, sometimes during battles where I was not even entirely sure who was fighting whom, and why they were bothering, and there is also a look at cloning in the future, as well as a sort of study into the personalities of the main characters. While I admire films that mix intelligence and ideas with action (`Minority Report,' the best film of last year, is a fine example), I think I need to have some time to breathe, and I also need to be able to know exactly what is going on. Keeping up with the plot is even more exhausting than keeping up with the action.

`Yesterday' is set mainly in 2020, in a unified Korea. It begins though, in 1990, where the scientists who are later to be killed off are picked for a special project, and some children disappear. The film starts off with a fight scene that made me think of the madness of `Black Hawk Down.' The confusion was part of the point of `Black Hawk Down,' here it is a distraction that takes much of the thrill (and all of the suspense) from the action scenes.

`Yesterday' requires a lot of attention and thought to follow the story, but it isn't really worth it. Yun Su-Jeon, I'm sure, has good films in him; what he needs to do now is find a story that he can explore more fully, without losing the audience. The film has split audiences in Korea. I do not hate it, but I did not particularly enjoy the experience of watching it; I ended up admiring aspects of it rather than enjoying it. I was looking at it rather than watching it.

While I think there could be a perfectly good character study about clones set in the future, or a perfectly good action films set in a world with clones and complex characters, the film tries to be both, never quite choosing what its main ambition is. Is it just trying to tell a story in its own way? Maybe, and maybe you'll enjoy its story, if you can keep up. I tried my best to, but didn't find the experience particularly rewarding.

** (out of 5)