Critic Reviews
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William Goss, MSN Movies
...does boast its fair share of gripping moments.
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Mark Olsen, Los Angeles Times
A breakneck mix of bone-crunching freneticism and bloody close-quarters knife-fighting with a strand of romantic melancholy.
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Manohla Dargis, New York Times
A rush of a movie from South Korea that slips and slides from horror to humor on rivers of blood and offers the haunting image of a man, primitive incarnate, beating other men with an enormous, gnawed-over meat bone.
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David Fear, Time Out New York
Like fellow countryman Park Chan-wook's vengeful epics, this man-on-the-run thriller knows how to deliver a rush; unlike those superior tales of lives on the edge, that's the only trick up its sleeve.
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Michael Atkinson, Village Voice
Writer-director Na Hong-Jin achieves a vibe of urban desolation right off the bat, and deepens the mayhem with acutely observed and charged details about illegal-immigrant life.
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David Jenkins, Time Out
A listless succession of brutal, consequence-free stabbings encase a pair of lengthy chase set pieces, both technically adept, both utterly ridiculous.
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Graham Young, Birmingham Post
Although the central story is compelling, even fans of this ultra-violent genre might find The Yellow Sea (the water between China and Korea) is too long and dark, especially given the way the leading characters wear black at night.
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Urban Cinefile Critics, Urban Cinefile
Probably the year's best crime drama and might be confirmation that there is a new master of the genre, spinning tough as teak tales, ready to emerge
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Anton Bitel, Film4
a gripping existentialist thriller, where jealousy, greed and desperation lead inexorably to a chaos of carnage, and where exile and death cross their borders to merge into an emotionally-charged sequence of final images.
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Philip Kemp, Total Film
At nearly two and a half hours long, The Yellow Sea is overkill in every sense.
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Philip French, Observer [UK]
[A] highly efficient Korean thriller...
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Derek Malcolm, This is London
The action is epic but there's psychological depth too.
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Peter Bradshaw, Guardian [UK]
Perhaps The Yellow Sea does not really hang together, and, yes, it could perhaps have lost 30 minutes. But its power and bite-strength are impressive.
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Mark Stafford, Electric Sheep
I was never bored, it's fast and funny and edge-of-the-seat tense; it's just that I'd still like to see the end of the film it started off being.
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Philip De Semlyen, Empire Magazine
A violent thrill-ride to a dark new corner of Asian cinema.
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Matt Singer, IFC.com
Frenzy is fine, but a little bit more clarity, at least narratively speaking, would have been nice.
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Thomas Caldwell, Cinema Autopsy
An exhilarating film with action that is breathtakingly kinetic and visceral.
Read all 17 critic reviews
Featured Audience Ratings
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Na Hong-jin's <i>The Yellow Sea</i> is a crafted Korean crime thriller.<p>The 2 hour 15 minute run time is lengthy, especially when the plot details get sketchy. The 4 chapter story does contain some good storytelling, but things can become elusive with a… More
Na Hong-jin's <i>The Yellow Sea</i> is a crafted Korean crime thriller.<p>The 2 hour 15 minute run time is lengthy, especially when the plot details get sketchy. The 4 chapter story does contain some good storytelling, but things can become elusive with a wealth of characters to focus on. Nonetheless, the plot twists come in at opportune times and the cloudiness of what comes next as the story progresses works in the film's favor.</p><p>Aside from the story, the gritty and realistic violence, full of knives and hatchets, is a pleasant surprise and in high abundance. The destructive vehicle sequences are the icing on the cake.</p><p>Ha Jung-woo is a convincing neutral protagonist. A lot of blood comes at the hands of Kim Yun-seok.</p><p>Once the final scene, which occurs in the closing credits, is over, <i>The Yellow Sea</i> finds itself as a recommendable picture out of Korea.</p>
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Na Hong Jin brings us his second feature after the dark and disturbing The Chaser. The Yellow Sea is a complex character piece that sees a man from Yanji City travel to South Korea to kill a man in order to pay off his missing wife's debts. Like The Chaser, this is also a film… More
Na Hong Jin brings us his second feature after the dark and disturbing The Chaser. The Yellow Sea is a complex character piece that sees a man from Yanji City travel to South Korea to kill a man in order to pay off his missing wife's debts. Like The Chaser, this is also a film that mixes fast paced action and gritty realistic violence. In many ways The Yellow Sea is a lot like a poor man's Bourne, but not in terms of production quality. As Gu Nam travels to Seoul it isn't by plane in a fancy suit, he's herded into a ship in a room with dozens of other people, freezing and sick not everyone makes it. Gu Nam takes his time over the kill and it shows his inexperience. Of course, Gu Nam is really there to search for his missing wife but as things escalate so does the action. Incredible chases on foot and by car elevate this thriller to something that really does thrust a man on the run thriller into the real world. As the film progresses more and more people find themselves involved in the hunt for Gu Nam it's rather humorous to see him quite oblivious to those after him. The Yellow Sea sees the tragic places people from the almost ignored Yanji City find themselves in. Love and dedication are the main themes but are hidden behind an exhilarating wall of delicately crafted action sequences. Brilliant.
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Liked it up to half way through, then felt like a totally different movie, too many characters, couldn't follow it at all. (or maybe it's just it was very late and I was tired...).
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Unlike the highly overrated "The Chaser" the story here makes sense, and there's not a bunch of silly coincidences, or clinically stupid cops. There's still some dumb cops, but the movie has a more convincing setting and characters. The problem is that, at some… More
Unlike the highly overrated "The Chaser" the story here makes sense, and there's not a bunch of silly coincidences, or clinically stupid cops. There's still some dumb cops, but the movie has a more convincing setting and characters. The problem is that, at some point, it becomes a long series of fight and chase sequences, where the protagonist, and the main antagonist, keep getting wounded, stabbed and what not over and over, without any real consequences to their bodies. This turns the movie into a cartoon, and from that point it becomes difficult to take it seriously. Again, just like the chaser, cheap thrills instead of real human drama, or effective characters.
With a proper script, Mr Hong-Jin Na he could do something good. We'll have to wait for that day to arrive.
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Yellow sea is one of the best action thrillers I have seen recently.everything is remarkable such as its 3D characters ,bleak atmosphere and memorable action scenes.Unlike I Saw the Devil another Korean action of this year we see an intellectual use of violence in entire film.
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In the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture at the intersection of North Korea, China and Russia, many of the citizens resort to illegal activities just to get by. Gu-nam(Ha Jung-woo) works as a cab driver while futilely playing mah jong to try to pay off the 60,000 yuan he borrowed… More
In the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture at the intersection of North Korea, China and Russia, many of the citizens resort to illegal activities just to get by. Gu-nam(Ha Jung-woo) works as a cab driver while futilely playing mah jong to try to pay off the 60,000 yuan he borrowed for his wife's visa into South Korea. Everybody else, including the two guys who visit him in the night wanting their money back, think that since he has not heard from her, she has obviously left him and is now sleeping around with half of Korea. He holds out hope, thinking that she would not abandon their daughter who his mother cares for. And hope does arrive in the person of Myun(Yun-Seok Kim) who offers to pay off his debts. The only question Gu-nam has is who does he have to kill?
There is much to admire in "The Yellow Sea," namely an intriguing setting and the plight of the dispossessed Joseonjok, mixed in with a noir plot of a man in trouble in way over his head, finely executed in a slow burn in the first half. So far, so good. What troubles me about the second half is not the escalating violence which was inevitable. In any case, the foot chases are well handled, especially the first one, and the second one is like a mini-triathlon in and of itself. But there is only one way for them to be resolved, otherwise the movie ends. That's not to mention the plot spinning out of control with major characters suddenly being introduced out of thin air. As time goes on, the movie becomes increasingly less about Gun-am which is a shame because he is sympathetic, not only because he is not the only character getting any sex.
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Director Na Hong-Jin's sophomore feature, THE YELLOW SEA is a crisp thriller that features excellent cinematography and a distinct style that has been prevalent in both this and his previous film (The Chaser) - a consistent sign of bravura filmmaking and likewise an auspicious… More
Director Na Hong-Jin's sophomore feature, THE YELLOW SEA is a crisp thriller that features excellent cinematography and a distinct style that has been prevalent in both this and his previous film (The Chaser) - a consistent sign of bravura filmmaking and likewise an auspicious start to a potentially great career. YELLOW SEA takes its time to get rolling but once it does, the ride is brutally violent and daringly unsympathetic - as if we were watching water slowly boil, but where the boiling point lasts ten times as long and swells again wave after wave after wave.
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After enjoying Man from nowhere, I absolutely wanted to see Yellow Sea, another Korean action thriller from the director Hong Jin Na. In Yellow Sea, the characters were so unappealing and unsympathetic, and it showed the hard life of these poor Koreans had to face on the border of… More
After enjoying Man from nowhere, I absolutely wanted to see Yellow Sea, another Korean action thriller from the director Hong Jin Na. In Yellow Sea, the characters were so unappealing and unsympathetic, and it showed the hard life of these poor Koreans had to face on the border of China, Russia.It was a seriously exciting movie with fast adrenaline action scenes experience that will have you questioning when, if ever, you saw these car chases and butchering skills in a Hollywood movie.( I guess, Never) When another group of hit men became involved, a series of events unfolds that transformed the hunter into the hunted, and that's where I will leave you to experience the plot twists for yourself.The lead character Gu-nam was an unlikely hero, and so were the villains, too, intriguing, with personalities worthy of their status and different enough from each other as to ensure that the audience was kept on tension from the begiining till the end.
Read all 8 featured audience ratings
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