The Yellow Sea delivers on action ...

The Yellow Sea, set in both China and South Korea, is the story of Gu-nam (Ha Jung-woo), a taxi driver living in the dangerous and deprived Yanji City, where he faces a daily struggle to pay off the debt for the Visa he bought for his wife to travel to South Korea. Gu-nam has not heard from his wife since she left for South Korea, and tortures himself with imaginings of her infidelities, sinking further into debt through drink and gambling.

Gu-nam’s salvation comes in the shape of Myun-ga (Kim Yun-seok), a seemingly polite and presentable gangster who offers to pay all of Gu-nam’s debts. All Gu-nam has to do is cross the Yellow Sea to South Korea and murder someone.

Unfortunately for Gu-nam, he is pipped to the post by another group of assassins. Gu-nam is framed for the murder and finds himself on the run from both the police and those responsible for the murder, who wish to eliminate all evidence of the crime, including Gu-nam.

The Yellow Sea received a large portion of its budget from Fox International and is the first Korean film to receive funding from such a major Hollywood Studio. The producers’ enthusiasm for Na Hong-jin’s directorial debut The Chaser can be seen in the casting and style of this film, which reunites the director with actors Ha Jung-woo and Kim Yun-seok, who were originally in opposite roles of villain and hero. The financial backing has clearly been put to good use. This film was a fairly long one at 140 minutes, but it didn’t feel it. Thanks to an extremely well thought out plot and a ridiculous amount of heart-stopping sequences, the movie rushed by and left me feeling out of breath by the end with a sore hand from gripping the arm of the chair.

The fight scenes in The Yellow Sea are outstanding, and the blood and guts give the unflinching gore in Ichi the Killer a run for its money. The violence was shown as we might expect real life violence to look; messy, harsh and clumsy. One such scene showed Gu-nam attempting to make the most of a bad situation by taking credit for the hit he had witnessed. We are shown the reality of such a situation as he desperately saws and hacks at the victim’s thumb, which, rather than neatly slicing off in convenient Hollywood style, is instead reduced to a pulpy mush in a moment both horrifying and highly amusing.

The acting in The Yellow Sea is excellent, and the film has produced one of the most terrifying and unstoppable villains since Anton Chigurh in No Country for Old Men. Kim Yun-seok is just fantastic as Myun-ga, slicing, pummelling and at one point even slaughtering people with a bone left over from dinner. He delivers some great one-liners and steals the show entirely. Ha Jung-woo is hugely likeable as the almost silent main character, and manages to deliver a sensitive and powerful performance despite having barely twenty lines in the entire film. Through subtle nuances in his body language and facial expression, Ha Jung-Woo makes long, static scenes which could be dull exciting and meaningful.

One of the strangest things about this film is that despite the grim storyline and undeniably depressing impression of South Korea and China, it still made me want to visit. Both countries were portrayed as dark but fascinating places, and the first glimpse of the night time lights in South Korea was a tantalising and gorgeous image.

The culture divide that can occasionally make Eastern films difficult to access by a Western audience simply isn’t present in The Yellow Sea. The characters are universal; the down-on-his-luck hero, the psychotic villain and the evil businessman. Clunky translation of dialogue, another foreign film killer, is also neatly avoided here, and what little dialogue there is is natural and clever. The joining of Fox with director Na Hong-jin has created a strange mix of authenticity with Hollywood glitz which is highly effective. The twist at the end of the film is very Hollywood, and provides a pleasing ‘Aha’ moment.

There is very little to criticise in the film, but picky action-lovers could comment that the action scenes are a little blurry, particularly the main car chase in the film, where the fuzzy shooting and editing led to some confusion as to which car was which. Having said this, the film’s worst action scenes were better than most films’ best, and often so brutal that the viewer is grateful for a little haziness.

The Yellow Sea has the potential to push Korean film into the spotlight, as it has a multi-cultural appeal as well as containing plenty for both action film fans and art film enthusiasts. Whispers of a sequel will keep me waiting with bated breath for the next instalment. It can only be hoped that people put off by subtitled films push aside their reluctance, as this film is truly not to be missed.

Brilliant.

The Yellow Sea is released on 21 October 2011 in the UK.

See also:

7 foreign-language films that are worth the subtitles

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