Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

"The Yellow Sea" stands out joltingly, even among the already-rich South Korean filmography, most due to the acting by Yun-seok Kim, playing the villain from China. If there ever was "Bad-Ass," he is it. While he start out the movie seeming to be some sort of small-time, local con- artist, as the movie progresses, he shows his chilling, true colors as a soulless, remorseless, goal-oriented psychopath who refuses to lose a fight. The scenes with Yun-seok Kim are truly some of the most electrifying, disturbing, and soul-killing scenes present in cinema. The Korean gangster counterparts provide almost a "commic" relief in their relative inadequacies, as well as the SK police which is depicted as impotent, as usually done in SK cinema. Ha plays the main character pretty well, given the script, but it is difficult to believe that a taxi driver from China could engineer to many clever stunts and escapes, given how little time and resource he had. Ha does succeed in capturing the empathy of the audience with his plight. This movie would have reached a higher level if some of the bloodshed and knifing were edited out to increase the shock value of the truly fierce scenes. Some of the car-chase and crash scenes should have been edited out as well to improve the coherence of the main theme and characters without so much Hollywood-esque action and noise to get in the way and dilute the mood. But overall the movie still shines bright as a dark, stark, chilling shocker that could not exist anywhere else in the cinema world.

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.

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.

Directed by Hong-jin Na The story of a cab driver in Yanji City, a region between North Korea, China and Russia. His wife goes to Korea to earn money, but he doesn't hear from her since in 6 months. He plays mah-jong to make some extra cash, but this only makes hif life worse; but then he meets a hit-man who proposes to turn his life around by repaying his debt and reuniting with his wife, just for one hit (Plot).Once again, the filmmakers and actors (the same as The Chaser 2008) from South Korea have hit a huge great film again, nothing bad here, just in one word when the film end you will say wow !, one of the best thrillers i saw in my life, the film combines many things such as crimes, suspense, betrayal, bloody fight, hunts, struggle, patience, pain, sacrifice,car chases and more! I love everything in this film, first the story of the film and how the director tells in three major characters in 4 chapters, secondly linking all the three characters in many scenes and goals (Money!), thirdly the great performance of the three characters especially the(Jung-woo Ha and Yun-seok Kim) and finally directing and Screenplay was remarkable !.Director Na in his 156-minute film divided into four chapters ( Taxi driver, Killer, Joseon Clan and Yellow Sea) practically wrote about the history of the building of primal instincts, how they get awakened by chance, how they crash with other instincts and the ending to it all.Had he given more commercial consideration he could have made the running time more compact. The latter half of the film drags on a bit due to the repeated pattern of killings and chase. Therefore dividing the film in chapters to show three people's perspectives from beginning to end is 100 percent director Na's own doing.5/5