Cathardincu Surprisingly incoherent and boring

SnoReptilePlenty Memorable, crazy movie

Comwayon A Disappointing Continuation

Aubrey Hackett While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

Shreshtha Mani Choudhary The Yellow Sea directed by Hong-jin Na is a thriller full of blood thirsty and vicious villeins ,and done in a way only our Koreans friends know how to.The films starts with the main character (Jung-woo Ha) who is a taxi driver struggling to return the money he took to send his wife to work in Korea.Now his wife hasn't contacted him in months.He has no money to pay his debt as his wife's not sending him any money.He is gambling ,picking fights and enduring treats.Then he is introduced to a man (Yun-seok Kim) who can solve all his problems in return for a simple job.The film is filled with trademark Korean type crude fights involving hacking, chopping, slashing and blood splattered on walls and floor.The movie looked in its element while dealing with violence but losses its edge when treading on other fields.Acting is great throughout but sadly its not enough to keep you hooked.The director's previous feature The Chaser kept you immersed in its tension but don't expect the same here.Similar shaky use of camera in The Bourne Ultimatum bothered some but not me.It did bothered me this time around.The overall background score and sound mixing seems choppy too.The Yellow Sea is not a bad film but its not a good one either.It surely has its moments but promises something it never delivers.It might have been the absence of a moral thread to connect and bind the whole film together.At the end its a film that could have been so good but it's undone by its overlong affair with apathy.Disappointing.

bob the moo Unable to break free of the visa debts that his wife left him with when she went to South Korea to earn money, a taxi driver takes an offer from local criminal Myun to be smuggled into South Korea in order to kill someone for him. The money is the main motivator but he also hopes he can find his wife somehow. Trying to accomplish these hurts both of his goals and, as he is soon to discover, the story is much larger than just a simple killing.I had heard good things about this film and, if I'm honest, it took me a while to get around to watching it mainly because the running time put me off. In a way I was right and wrong because when I finally did watch it the running time is excessive but yet it does mostly still deliver as a thriller. The plot sees a simple murder escalate as others involve in its planning or execution all start to represent a danger to our main character, who is trying to get home even though he'll be no safer there. It takes a little while to get moving but the film soon delivers some violent scenes as well as some exciting chases and escapes. The build of the plot helps these be engaging and exciting while in fairness they are also pretty well filmed as well. The more frantic action has the feel of the Bourne movies (although not as effective) and those that know the locations may get extra value from Busan harbor and some of Seoul showing up.The plot isn't perfect though and it does contribute towards most of the film's weaknesses. The first of these is the subplot involving the missing wife; it acts as an engagement tool with the main character that we didn't really need but otherwise it just seems to add distraction away from the main narrative. I was fine with it being mentioned but in the end I didn't understand why it was given so much time. Speaking of time, this is an issue because the film runs far longer than it really needs to and even though I enjoyed it, I still found myself thinking of all the really obvious places where the film could have been edited down to a still-generous two hours. As it is, the length means the pace cannot be kept up and that the simple story is spread out too much. This shows in how excessive but yet how very tidy everything gets. I liked the way that the various characters all fell into place around the lead's story, but I liked it best when it was chaotic, not when it is all pulled together to be all tidy and resolved at the end. That said I did enjoy the nihilistic tone it had and that, in the end, the route of the original murder was something so simple and personal that it wasn't even worth one man's death, far less all those shown here.The main actor is convincing and kept me interested in his escape; his performance keeps him as a human and tragic figure even though he is able to evade the odds a bit too easily and a bit too frequently. Myun is a great character full of menace and violence and the actor has fun in that role, but the excessive action does at time get too much to buy into since he has a stamina that a Terminator would baulk at. The rest of the cast fill in well enough, but mostly it is the action and plot that keeps the film moving, not the performances. Na's direction is good although I know some dislike cameras that move all the time.Overall Hwanghae is a solid and enjoyable thriller which would be better were it not for its own excesses. The running time is excessive, the spiralling plot and stamina of the main characters are excessive and the whole film really needed a tighter edit to make the most of its strengths. Still solidly good but could have been more.

diggus doggus I'll try to keep this review brief - you're encouraged to go see the film and judge for yourself;The plot is simple - and in-debt man from a northern province of Korea travels to Seoul to assassinate someone to pay his debts; the result is utter chaos as he tries to escape back home.Right, first off, if blood and gore scare you, this film is not for you - it's quite gruesome and relentless in the violence; The Yellow Sea does not compromise, does not glorify the hit-man (he's just a taxi driver), nor does it include any super-human feats of agility or other unlikelihoods in its plot. The roughness of the story and its characters is the real strength, and i have found myself watching intently (waiting for the usual ridiculous Hollywood stuff to happen) as i rarely do, but TYS continues to deliver without pause.Unfortunately not all is well; good characters, good lead, good pacing but some truly horrid camera work spoils what would have been a great film in its genre. Why the Koreans must have learned the Blair Witch Shake because, while it's reasonable for the camera to shake during chase scenes, it's not acceptable that any movement on screen (be it a man's mouth opening as he eats, or a car passing by) must be mirrored by the camera making the same movement.All in all, The Yellow Sea is gritty and dark like only the asians know how to make, but the camrashakey- end result is really bad, and makes this a film to recommend only to those who know what they are after.My final vote: 7/10 and who knows .. if it had been made properly ...

rightwingisevil another near perfect thriller out of south Korea. i don't know what and how most movie festivals giving out award, but all movies directed by this director and screenplays written by this specific several movies directed by this specific director, the screenplay writer(s), both should have received the highest honors of awards. based upon my forty years movie viewing experience, i've never seen anything like these kind of well written, well directed and well performed korean movies. these movies mentioned by other reviewers are just on different level, making hollwood's films in similar genre like worthless garbage. watching every one of these movies just became a psychiatric treatment, the perfect and ultimate catharsis to drain the stress caused by the financial burden and bore-to-death day in and day out urban living, because nobody could be more down and out like the main characters portrayed in these movies, and not any common person, you or me, could be less lucky like these characters faced in their lives. korean movie thrillers are just so uniquely different from other countries, in my opinion, they are definitely on a higher level, higher than where the Hollywood, bollywood, Japanese, Chinese stand. because every time when i finished a korean movie like 'the yellow sea', 'the man from nowhere', 'i saw the devil'....i felt the stress that constantly burdened on my mind and shoulders would go away temporarily, i actually felt better and more alive. no other country's movies could have such catharsis-like effect.highly recommended to those who got the similar burden like me.