Yellow Sea

I was able to see Yellow Sea last week in Seoul. It is both envigorating and disappointing. Na Hong-jn has created another example of what can go wrong when there is no over-sight of a director working from his own script.

Na defines the film in four acts.

The first is set in the area of China just north of the Yalu River where a large Korean population has been settled for decades. The look into this world is fascinating and almost realite in its harsh, casual representation of a violent poverty. Ha Jung-woo (better and better all the time) is a loser, a gambler, a taxi-driver into the sharks for big money. His wife has left him for a better life with a man in South Korea. He is boxed into taking a hit-job in Seoul for the local crime lord (a rasputin-like Kim Yun-seok). Ha's 'human-traffic' experience getting to South korea is heartless, cold, graphic and shocking.

The second act takes place in Seoul with Ha as the isolated, always freezing would be assassin who looks for his wife while stalking his wealthy target. I will not spoil the plot with details but will say that this second act runs right up there with the first.

It is the third act where Na needed somebody to yell CUT!. The story leaves Ha (for the most part) and brings in hordes of knife-wielding killers in black suits or dressed like a Mongol horde. The absurdity and blood-letting put Old Boy to shame. The movie derails totally in this third piece.

The final act almost saves things (almost) through the re-focus on Ha (once again being chased by Kim). Story lines come full circle and even the excesses of the third act are somewhat explained (not enough to save the film though).

There is a great movie in Yellow Sea (in search of a good editor)...the problem is that Na drowns it in a swamp of nonsensical blood-letting