The Yellow Sea

Dir: Na Hong-jin

2010

****

Wow. Na Hong-jin's relentless crime thriller is one of the best in the genre, I'm just not sure why it is still so relatively unknown. It tells the story of Gu-nam, a Joseonjok (ethnic Korean immigrant living in China) down on his luck working as a taxi driver. When not working, he is often found at gambling halls, finding himself further and further in serious debt. His wife left to work in South Korea and promised to send money back but he has yet to hear from her and is tormented by nightmares of her having an extra-marital affair. To make matters worse, Gu-nam is fired from his job and debt collectors take most of his severance pay. After witnessing a drunken display at a gambling hall, local gangster, Myun Jung-hak, offers him a deal. If Gu-nam goes to South Korea to kill a businessman, he will get CN¥57,000 (US$10,000). Gu-nam accepts and leaves for South Korea by train and a rickety fishing boat, with some money for expenses. When Gu-nam arrives in South Korea, he carefully scopes out his target for days, while also searching for his wife on the side. When the time arrives for Gu-nam to take out his target, a string of unexpected events occurs, leaving him desperately looking for a way out. Meanwhile, the police, the South Korean mob, as well as the ethnic Korean Chinese mafia, all frantically search for him. The speed of the film is overwhelming. We watch our anti-hero go from one impossible situation to another with hardly any let up in the plot. However, it is never too much for the senses, it's easy to follow and thrillingly entertaining. The stunts are amazing but never stupid, the action is high end but never ridiculous, indeed, this is an action/thriller that Hollywood would do well to learn from. It's hard to believe, even after watching, that The Yellow Sea is a whopping 140 minutes long. Unthinkable for an action film, or at least until now. To continue to build a film up to a climactic finish over that amount of time is unheard of, but somehow Na Hong-jin pulls it off, quite effortlessly too. It is ultra-realistic but has plenty of cinematic magic. It's pretty violent, brutal even but I have to say it was nice to see an absence of guns in such a film. The insight into Korean culture was also pretty interesting, the disdain for Joseonjoks in South Korea being an interesting plot device. The direction is superb, utterly stunning, hand-held for a lot of the time but still epic in the way it is shot. The performances are also brilliant, Ha Jung-woo is amazing as Gu-nam and Kim Yoon-seok is iconic in his role as the seemingly untouchable mob boss. The film was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival and was easily one of the best films featured. It's awesome, a film that deserves far more credit and the first epic thriller of the decade and definitely one of the best.