grantss Uneven pacing and ultimately quite hit-and-miss.Gu-nam (played by Jung-woo Ha) is a taxi driver in Yanji City, in China, near North Korea. Through a gambling habit, he has run up a large amount of debt. Wis wife has gone to South Korea to find a job and he hasn't seen her in six months. A local gangster then offers him a large sum of money to kill someone in South Korea. He accepts and heads to South Korea, but things don't go according to plan.So-so. The second quarter was interesting, the rest was meh. Starts slowly, then suddenly ratchets up the action, then basically becomes one long chase and ultimately fizzles out. A tighter plot, especially in the latter half, would have made it far more compelling.Decent performances all round though.

CinemaClown After making his mark with a sensational debut feature that easily ranks amongst the finest thrillers of the decade, director Na Hong-jin follows it up with another thriller that isn't as amazing as his previous film but is expertly crafted nonetheless. The Yellow Sea tells the story of a cab driver who hasn't heard from his wife for 6 months after she left for Korea to earn some money. With financial debt escalating, this man tries gambling to earn extra cash but ends up losing at it too & when faced with a dead end, decides to do a bidding for a local hit-man that goes horribly wrong, thus creating some terrible situation for him.Honestly, the first half felt pretty slow to reach where it needed to be & the characters aren't interesting either to keep many invested in the story but the second half makes up for a lot of things that went wrong & is relentlessly paced, throwing one violent punch after another. The plot isn't easy to follow either with too many characters & sub-plots creating much confusion about who's talking about whom & might require another viewing. Direction is good but those who've seen this director's previous work & were expecting a similar mind-blowing experience will be slightly disappointed.There are however nothing but positives as far as the technical aspect of the film goes. Cinematography uses the right colour tones to set its gritty, decaying atmosphere & even the hand-held shots are finely photographed. Editing would've been even better if the story had a more definite structure, music doesn't carry any complaints & the performances are brilliant as well. On an overall scale, The Yellow Sea isn't by any means a bad thriller but it sure could've been a much better product if the script was more polished. Worth a watch? Definitely. It didn't work for me because of my high expectations but it just might for you. Give it a try. And don't miss its after-credits scene.

Chadwick Ahn "Start your life over."Na Hong-jin, the director of the successful thriller, The Chaser, made another film two years later containing similar themes of crime, desperation, and gore. Both films have the same lead actors as well, instead this time, Kim Yun-seok and Ha Jung-woo switch places as protagonist and villain. And it works out pretty well for them. Ha Jung- woo plays Gu-nam, a poor taxi driver in the Yanbian Province (a Chinese region bordering North Korea and Russia). His wife left him and their daughter to go work in South Korea and send over money. The lack of communication from his wife for over six months has him worried and his debt only increases. In comes Kim Yun-seok's character, Myun-ga, a hit-man boss who offers Gu-nam a chance to pay off his debt and see his wife if he carries out just one hit in Korea. Gu-nam tucks away what little values he has left and hesitantly accepts, resulting in him being shipped off to Korea over the Yellow Sea. A complicated murder and chase story then begins.Just like other Korean thrillers, The Yellow Sea is gruesomely violent and puts its protagonist through many harrowing situations. The film starts off strong, with a clear idea of where the plot will lead: Gu-nam goes to Korea, kills the man he's been sent to murder, and returns. However, things don't go as planned, resulting in Gu-nam being chased down not only by the police and Myun-ga, but by another hit gang as well. At this point, the movie becomes lost in its initial story of a man trying to commit murder for money and branches off as an hour long chase film. There are literally scenes up to 15 minutes of poor Gu-nam running from a fight he's been caught in the middle of. The chase sequences consist of a lot of action, including multiple cars crashing and flying into the air, without flashy CGI. Because of these chases, the film distances itself away from the characters, or more likely, the characters run away from the film. What starts as a film focusing on the characters' lives and internal struggles, ends up having less and less to offer about the protagonist's dark mentality, and more to offer in terms of physical fights and blood gushing from a hapless victim.The Yellow Sea starts with drama and ends with mindless action. On the other hand, The Chaser is a continuous spectacle of psychological entertainment. Even so, The Yellow Sea proves that lovers of suspense and thrillers should continue to keep an eye out for Na Hong-jin's future works.

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.