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

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 mahjong to make some extra cash, but this only makes his 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.

Fans of action films, gangster movies, thrillers, spy films... you will enjoy this movie. It has a similar level of production value as "Oldboy", and the same graphic violence -- perhaps even more so. While the idea was that one Korean was targeted for death, he is only one of many who end up in the path of slaughter.

There is an interesting political and cultural undertone here, but I am not knowledgeable enough to fully grasp and understand it. The main character is a Chinese citizen of Korean descent, who are apparently a culture all their own in China and treated as such. I feel like there is some important message in that, but I am not well-versed in Chinese or Korean culture and cannot say too much.

The film has minor flaws. I was not sure who every character was -- two men, for example, show up part way through and I either missed their importance or it is not clearly explained. And how the protagonist is able to outrun a dozen or more police officers at a time without special training is beyond me.

An absolutely spectacular Korean thriller that a) does everything perfectly and b) engages and involves the viewer like few other films. South Korea is currently one of the hottest places in the world for film-makers; it was only last year that I saw the excellent MAN FROM NOWHERE for the first time, a movie that soon became a favourite. THE YELLOW SEA follows suit. Although it's a two-and-a-half-hour movie, it grips you from the outset and never lets you go.

If only Western cinema would take as many risks and gambles as this film does. It's not an easy watch; pretty much the entire cast is populated by criminals and murderers, and even the protagonist is a man who thinks nothing of taking on a contract killing job. Yet he becomes a character you root for, purely because he's less evil than the others out to get him; he appears to be a man of his word, at least as far as we can tell, and that counts for something in a dog-eat-dog world.

The film reunites the director and two stars of the excellent serial killer flick THE CHASER but THE YELLOW SEA is a different beast entirely: a wronged man-style thriller if you will. It packs a great deal of thoroughly exciting chase and action sequences into the running time; inspired by THE BOURNE SUPREMACY, each of these employs the shaky-cam to excellent effect, where you never miss out on the action. This is also an exceptionally violent film packed with knife and hatchet fights and brutal slayings that sit alongside more Hollywoodised foot and car chases.

The actors are excellent in their parts; so believable that you never question them for a second. Ha Jung-woo is particularly good because he never does anything to make you sympathise with him for a moment, and yet you end up doing so anyway; he's just a small-time guy who gets out of his depth and has to use his ingenuity to survive. His journey is one of the most gritty and realistic I've ever seen in film; it doesn't get any more engrossing than this. Kim Yun-seok, in contrast, playing people-smuggler Myun, is larger than life and his character's ability to survive against overwhelming odds is similarly profound. Beautifully shot and expertly scripted, The Yellow Sea is an example of cinema as it should be; if only more films were like this!