Review of The Yellow Sea (2010) by Alfin N — 24 Jun 2011

Totally outstanding. I saw this at the LA Film Festival and I was blown away by this film. It is director Na Hong-jin's best film so far - his other film being The Chaser (which is also quite excellent).

The story starts out simply enough with a taxi driver living in near the border of North Korea (yet in an area of China) who has a gambling addiction and is stuck with the debt of his wife that left for South Korea a few years prior. He basically has no hope of paying off his debts, when suddenly a dog seller/underworld mob boss offers him a job that will just about cover his debts. All he has to do is kill a man in South Korea - at the same time he's considering finding his wife, who, at this point, he both loves - for their time together - and hates - for her leaving him. And that's the simple part.

Suddenly things become very complicated - and the assassination of the person that our supposed 'protagonist' is sent to kill is only the spark to greater conflict that results in constant, well-shot chase scenes as well as equally awesome, ultraviolent, gory action scenes. In the film there are three groups that we can cheer for - the Chinese underworld gang that hired the taxi driver (which is my personal favorite, because their leader is virtually invincible), the South Korean mob (a bunch of high class pussies), and the taxi driver himself who is constantly running and fighting to simply survive. Each one has a motive and each one is, to some extent, just as morally corrupt as the other (at least to more 'moral and decent' people, like ourselves supposedly).

The taxi driver (I think his name is Gu-nam) comes from a dog eat dog part of the world and fights only to survive. He is in constant confusion of being in Korea because he doesn't truly understand the morals of the new place - after all he comes from a harsher environment where people die from famine and disease. At some point Gu-nam's choices are confusing, but that's because he acts on instinct.

There's also Myun who hires Gu-nam to 'contract kill' a professor in Korea. He is a tough mo-fo, and is brilliantly portrayed by Kim Yun-seok. He eventually gets involved in trying to take down both the Korean mob leader and Gu-nam (for various reasons), and he has a habit of successfully taking down his opponents with a hatchet. His gang is comprised of non-businesslike savages who eat meat in a sloppy manner and leave the bones sitting around -- they're like a pack a wolves, and he's the alpha (who uses the left over bones to smash in some skulls).

The Korean gang and their leader simply want Gu-nam dead, and they stop at nothing to try to have this happen - however their men get killed within minutes per half a dozen simply by Hyun and his trusty hatchet.

Eventually, again, this movie becomes all out chaos - and the best part is, we care for the characters, and to some extent we want them all to win (well... some of them anyway).

This film is wonderfully directed, acted, shot, and edited together. It's one of the best Korean films I've ever seen, and, if you get a chance to see this gem, TAKE IT! You will not be disappointed.