Yellow Sea tells the story of a Korean cab driver who lives in a frontier city over the Chinese border. Its more akin to the wild west than anything. His wife has runaway to Seoul while he gambles away all his money. Our hero is given the opportunity to clear his debt and see her by performing a hit in Seoul. Taking the job he finds himself smuggled into the city. He splits his time by doing recon on his target and by looking for his wife who has gone missing. When things go horribly wrong he's on the run from everyone, Chinese gangsters Korean gangsters and the police, and it's a bloody (very bloody) fight for survival.
I won't go into the trials I endured to see the film, but all I can say was the film wasn't worth the effort and it disappointed me. While I don't think the film is bad, I just can't understand why it's 2 hours and 35 minutes long when vast portions of the film seem to be the same thing over and over again. If I never seen another fight with knives and hatchets it will be too soon. While I applaud the realistic amounts of blood used many of the fights seem to be variations on a theme and repeated over and over again.
Forgive me, but this whole film seems like something that has been done before any number of times since the earliest days of Film Noir, particularly the ones that crashed into the Red Menace.
Worse I found the films action sequences, the chases and fight sequences far from exciting or even gripping. The difference in the action sequences between this film and the directors Chaser are night and day with the sequences in the earlier film grabbing you by the throat and holding you hostage. Here its kind of like Oh look a chase scene or a knife fight how much more of this is there? I don't see what some people are seeing in the film. I know the film has been picked up for a big release in the US, and while I think it's a good film, I just can't see why, with all the other better films coming out of Korea, this one got picked up? I would love to think that you could chop this film down so that it loses an hour, but the nonsense is so tangled up with the good parts that it's impossible. I suppose that the best we can hope for is a remake that steps everything up
I won't go into the trials I endured to see the film, but all I can say was the film wasn't worth the effort and it disappointed me. While I don't think the film is bad, I just can't understand why it's 2 hours and 35 minutes long when vast portions of the film seem to be the same thing over and over again. If I never seen another fight with knives and hatchets it will be too soon. While I applaud the realistic amounts of blood used many of the fights seem to be variations on a theme and repeated over and over again.
Forgive me, but this whole film seems like something that has been done before any number of times since the earliest days of Film Noir, particularly the ones that crashed into the Red Menace.
Worse I found the films action sequences, the chases and fight sequences far from exciting or even gripping. The difference in the action sequences between this film and the directors Chaser are night and day with the sequences in the earlier film grabbing you by the throat and holding you hostage. Here its kind of like Oh look a chase scene or a knife fight how much more of this is there? I don't see what some people are seeing in the film. I know the film has been picked up for a big release in the US, and while I think it's a good film, I just can't see why, with all the other better films coming out of Korea, this one got picked up? I would love to think that you could chop this film down so that it loses an hour, but the nonsense is so tangled up with the good parts that it's impossible. I suppose that the best we can hope for is a remake that steps everything up