Fantastic Fest 2011

At Fantastic Fest 2008 Na Hong-jin blew audiences away with his incredibly assured debut feature THE CHASER. For his sophomore film THE YELLOW SEA, Na has reassembled his two leads from THE CHASER and crafted a hyper-violent, border crossing crime epic sure to become another audience favorite.

Gu-nam (Ha Jung-woo) is a cab driver in Yanji City, a Chinese region between North Korea and Russia dominated mostly by Joseonjok, Chinese citizens of Korean ancestry. After going into extreme debt with shady types who smuggle his wife into Korea to work, Gu-nam fears his wife has left him in Yanji for good when he hasn’t heard from her for six months. The opportunity for him to pay off all liabilities comes in the form of an offer from Myung-ga (Kim Yun-seok), a powerful crime boss to whom Gu-nam owes many mahjong gambling losses. Myung-ga offers to smuggle Gu-nam into Korea where he will kill someone for him. Gu-nam accepts but gets far more than he bargained for when his plans go off the rails. He must then struggle to maintain balance in an increasingly chaotic series of events and find the time to track down his wife.

THE YELLOW SEA unravels organically, Na taking time to follow Gu-nam in his confusion as he loses track of shifting loyalties. The world he finds himself caught up in, though, is extremely volatile and he soon finds himself on the giving and receiving end of many sharp objects. Featuring enough chaotic knife antics, stress-inducing hatchet acrobatics, extended chases and car crashes to fill 5 movies, THE YELLOW SEA is a the kind of dark, violent crime epic we have come to expect from Korea and a film that firmly establishes Na Hong-jin as a major force in Korean cinema. (Brian Kelley)