THE YELLOW SEA (HWANGHAE)
Korea, 2010, 140 minutes, Colour.
Ha Jung-woo, Byung hoon Lee.
Directed by Hong-jin na.
Director Hong-jin Na has written and directed only two films, The Chaser and The Yellow Sea. The films belong to the action school of Korean film-making popular since the 1990s. Films like Old Boy and Sympathy for Lady Vengeance made this genre of police and gangster thrillers popular and critically respectable. The Chaser screened at the Cannes Film Festival.
The films are complex in their presentation of characters, the law and the exercise of violence.
This film opens in the seemingly remote area between Korea, China and Russia, home for many migrants after the Korean war, the Cho-Sun-Jok?. The inhabitants are not highly regarded, especially in Seoul where most of the action takes place. There is a lot of crime, gangs and bosses, killers for hire. They can be employed by seemingly respectable criminals in South Korea to handle their dirty work.
While this makes for interesting plots, though there is always a problem of who is working for whom, there is a grim perspective on life, often life being cheap, and difficult to find redeeming characteristics in the gallery of characters. The central character here is a cab driver in Yanji City whose wife has left for Korea and disappeared. He is an inveterate gambler and is hired to go to Seoul to assassinate a professor. This leads to tangles with underworld characters and, in something like the style of Charles Bronson action films of decades ago, this unlikely looking killer uses his wits to survive the increasing attempts on his life.
The film is quite long and becomes repetitive in its confrontations. But, what makes it difficult for some audiences, is the visual and action brutality in the assaults and killings, the close-up gashing (this is a film of blades not guns) and an atmosphere of crime, greed and betrayal that is not for the squeamish.
1. A film from Korea? The work of the director? His interest in crime? Crime worlds?
2. The Chinese setting, the title? The city of Yanj? The settling of this city and this region of China by refugees from Korea at the time of the Japanese occupation? The descendants? Koreans in China?
3. The visuals of the city, the world of the taxi driver, the streets, people, dark areas, gambling halls? The musical score?
4. The Koreans working in China, working, gambling, being fired… In difficulties?
5. Gu-nam, his character, driving the taxi, his presence in China, his relationship with his wife, her going to Korea to work, to send back money, his gambling, his debts, the creditors? His work, customers? Being fired? The approach of the gangster, the task, the commission? To go to Korea? The murder, time to look for his wife – and his suspicions and her not sending back money?
6. The picture of the gangsters, their controls? The various gangs, the plans for the murders, the complexities, going to Korea to supervise and intervene?
7. Gu-nam, his travel to Korea, the train, the boat with the illegal migrants?
8. In Korea, the city, his target, the intervention of the gangsters, his having to go into the building, the plan going awry?
9. His search for his wife? The experience of the contract for the killing? His future?
