The Yellow Sea (film)
| The Yellow Sea | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical release poster | |
| Directed by | Na Hong-jin |
| Screenplay by | Na Hong-jin |
| Starring | Ha Jung-woo Kim Yoon-seok |
| Cinematography | Lee Sung-jae |
| Music by | Youngkyu Jang Byung-hoon Lee |
Production companies | Fox International Productions Popcorn Films |
| Distributed by | Showbox/Mediaplex 20th Century Fox |
Release date |
|
Running time | 140 minutes[1] |
| Country | South Korea |
| Languages | Korean Mandarin |
| Budget | US$9 million |
| Box office | US$15.8 million[2] |
The Yellow Sea (Korean: 황해; RR: Hwanghae) is a 2010 South Korean action thriller film[3][4] directed by Na Hong-jin and starring Ha Jung-woo and Kim Yoon-seok in the lead roles. This film marks the reunion of the director and the lead actors who also first collaborated for the 2008 film The Chaser, in which Ha Jung-woo played the antagonist and Kim Yoon-seok played the protagonist. In The Yellow Sea, Ha Jung-woo plays the protagonist while Kim Yoon-seok plays the antagonist.
The film revolves around a cab driver who agrees to carry out a hit on a professor in exchange for getting his debts paid. He soon becomes a fugitive after the hit goes wrong, and is chased by both the police and the gangster who assigned him the task.
The Yellow Sea was released in South Korea on 22 December 2010.
Plot
In northeastern Chinese city of Yanji in Yanbian Prefecture, Gu-nam (Ha Jung-woo), an ethnic Korean, or Joseonjok, toils away as a taxi driver. When not working, he is often found at gambling halls. Gu-nam is now in serious debt. His wife left to work in South Korea and promised to send money back. He has yet to hear from her and is tormented by nightmares of her having an extra-marital affair. To make matters worse, Gu-nam is fired from his job and debt collectors take most of his severance pay.
Local gangster, Myun Jung-hak (Kim Yoon-seok), offers him a deal: if Gu-nam goes to South Korea to kill a professor named Kim Seung-hyun, he will get CN¥57,000 (US$10,000). Gu-nam accepts and leaves for South Korea by train and a rickety fishing boat, with US$500 for expenses.
When Gu-nam arrives in South Korea, he carefully scopes out his target for days, while also searching for his wife. When the time arrives for Gu-nam to take out his target, a string of unexpected events occurs, leaving him desperately looking for a way out. The police, the South Korean mob, as well as the ethnic Korean Chinese mafia, begin to frantically search for Gu-nam, who evades capture and begins to investigate what really occurred. After abducting and interrogating a gang member, he soon learns Seung-hyun was the target of a Korean businessman named Tae-won, who meets with Myun in order to capture Gu-nam. After narrowly avoiding Myun and Tae-Won's men, Gu-nam resolves to leave and go back to Yanbian. Gu-nam's activities occur at the same time as police discover that the body of a woman fitting his wife's description, and he pays a man to identify and have her cremated.
While attempting to leave Korea on a tanker ship, Gu-nam is cornered by Myun's men and is almost killed, but is able to escape. Some of Myun's men are arrested and point them towards Tae-won, who has Myun targeted by assassins. The rest of Myun's crew are killed, but Myun survives and makes his way to Tae-Won and kidnaps him. Myun brings him to an empty bus station, but Tae-won escapes the car and the two mortally wound each other. Following a lead, Gu-nam is injured in a car accident and abducted by the drivers in the other car. Gu-nam manages to eliminate them when they attempt to kill him, but is heavily wounded in the process. Shortly after, Gu-nam arrives at the station and stands over Tae-won's body, whose near-death mumbling implies that he had Seung-hyun murdered because he allegedly had an affair with Tae-won's wife. Myun passes out at the wheel of his van and crashes at the station entrance, and dies from his wounds. At a restaurant, Gu-nam meets with the man who helped identify his wife and is given her ashes. When he attempts to buy a train ticket back home, he sees his wife, who is alive and well; the woman who was murdered was someone else. Gu-nam leaves the train station, with his wife catching a glimpse of him before he disappears into the crowd.
Gu-nam heads to a pier and takes a fisherman hostage and orders him to go to Yanbian. While on the boat, he reminisces about his wife and daughter, remorseful of his actions; he later succumbs to his earlier wounds. The fisherman then dumps Gu-nam's body in the water and throws the ashes out as well. In a mid-credit scene, Gu-nam's wife arrives home by train.
Cast
- Ha Jung-woo as Gu-nam
- Kim Yoon-seok as Myun Jung-hak
- Jo Sung-ha as Tae-won
- Lee Chul-min as Choi Sung-nam
- Kwak Do-won as Prof. Kim Seung-hyun
- Lim Ye-won as Prof. Kim's wife
- Tak Sung-eun as Gu-nam's wife
- Kim Ki-hwan as Prof. Kim's driver
- Ki Se-hyung as Tae-won's subordinate
- Lee El as Joo-young, Tae-won's mistress
- Oh Yoon-hong as Tae-won's wife
- Jung Man-sik as Detective
- Jung Min-sung as Detective
- Kim Dong-hyun as Detective
- Park Byung-eun as bank employee
- Jang So-yeon as employee at Do-man Hotel
- Yang Ki-won as detective
- Sung Byoung-sook as Gu-nam's mother
- Kong Jung-hwan as Jeon Pil-kyoo
- Baek Won-gil as Korean-Chinese kidnapper 1
- Kang Hyun-joong as Busan port sailor
- Yoo Ha-bok as Yanbian taxi boss
- Lee Hee-joon as policeman
- Lee Jun-hyeok as dog seller 2
- Kim Jae-hwa as Jung-hak's girlfriend (uncredited)
Release
The film was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival,[5] as well as the 2011 Filmfest München.
The Australian and UK films rights were sold to Bounty Films. The UK release of the film was on October 21, 2011.
Reception
The film opened on December 22, 2010 in South Korea and was top of the box office, selling 1.05 million tickets in its first five days of release, according to the Korean Film Council.[6] The film sold a total of 2,142,742 tickets nationwide.[7]
The film received positive critical reviews. The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported that 88% of 25 critics have given the film a positive reviews.[8] On review aggregator website Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 70 out of 100 based on 19 critics, indicating "generally positive reviews".[9]
Mark Olsen of The Los Angeles Times wrote "A breakneck mix of bone-crunching freneticism and bloody close-quarters knife-fighting with a strand of romantic melancholy".[10] The New York Times's Manohla Dargis wrote "A rush of a movie from South Korea that slips and slides from horror to humor on rivers of blood and offers the haunting image of a man, primitive incarnate, beating other men with an enormous, gnawed-over meat bone."[11] The Hollywood Reporter's Maggie Lee stated "The raging stamina, unrelenting violence, rapid-fire editing and truncated narrative all give one no pause for thought or even breath. By the time the central mystery is revealed in a nice twist, it gets swallowed in the messy, anti-climactic end."[12] Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian added "This noirish South Korean gangster film is a deafening explosion of energy, gruesome violence and chaos that, despite its implausibilities, has brashness and style... Perhaps The Yellow Sea does not really hang together, and, yes, it could perhaps have lost 30 minutes. But its power and bite-strength are impressive."[13] Philip Kemp of GamesRadar+ gave the film two stars out of five, stating "At nearly two and a half hours long, The Yellow Sea is overkill in every sense."[14] Michael Atkinson of The Village Voice mentioned "If anything, Na's film is too much of a good thing, exceeding credibility too often (the punching-bag hero is far too lucky - good and bad - and absorbs a hilarious amount of punishment) in its pursuit of despairing violence. But that's the Korean way, and Na nails down the bottom feeder realism while slouching toward video-game hyperbole".[15]
Awards and nominations
| Year | Award | Category | Recipients | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 48th Grand Bell Awards | Best Film | The Yellow Sea | Nominated | |
| Best Director | Na Hong-jin | Nominated | ||
| Best Actor | Kim Yoon-seok | Nominated | ||
| Best Supporting Actor | Jo Sung-ha | Won | ||
| Best Cinematography | Lee Sung-jae | Nominated | ||
| Best Editing | Kim Sun-min | Nominated | ||
| Best Art Direction | Lee Hoo-gyoun | Nominated | ||
| Best Lighting | Hwang Soon-wook | Nominated | ||
| Best Costume Design | Chae Kyung-hwa | Won | ||
| Best Visual Effects | Kim Tae-hun, Jeong Jae-hun | Nominated | ||
| Best Sound Effects | Choi Tae-young | Nominated | ||
| 32nd Blue Dragon Film Awards | Best Actor | Kim Yoon-seok | Nominated | |
| Best Supporting Actor | Jo Sung-ha | Nominated | ||
| Best Cinematography | Lee Sung-jae | Nominated | ||
| Best Art Direction | Lee Hoo-gyoun | Nominated | ||
| Best Lighting | Hwang Soon-wook | Won | ||
| 47th Baeksang Arts Awards | Best Film | The Yellow Sea | Nominated | |
| Best Director | Na Hong-jin | Nominated | ||
| Best Actor | Ha Jung-woo | Won | ||
| 5th Asian Film Awards | Best Director | Na Hong-jin | Nominated | |
| Best Actor | Ha Jung-woo | Won | ||
| Best Production Designer | Lee Hwo-kyoung | Nominated | ||
| Best Composer | Jang Young-gyu and Lee Byung-hoon | Nominated | ||
| 5th Asia Pacific Screen Awards | Achievement in Directing | Na Hong-jin | Nominated | |
| 64th Cannes Film Festival | Un Certain Regard | Nominated | ||
| 31st Korean Association of Film Critics Awards | Best Actor | Ha Jung-woo | Won | |
| 20th Buil Film Awards | Nominated | |||
| 15th Puchon International Fantastic Film Festival | Best Director | Na Hong-jin | Won | |
| Best of Puchon | Nominated | |||
| Chicago International Film Festival | Gold Hugo | Nominated |
References
- ^ "The Yellow Sea". British Board of Film Classification. Retrieved 2011-08-22.
- ^ "Hwanghae (The Yellow Sea) (2010)". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved 2012-06-04.
- ^ The Yellow Sea on iTunes | Genre: Action & Adventure
- ^ THE YELLOW SEA | British Board of Film Classification
- ^ "Official Selection 2011". Cannes Film Festival. Archived from the original on May 15, 2011. Retrieved 2015-02-05.
- ^ Park, Soo-mee (27 December 2010). "Yellow Sea Tops Korean Holiday Box Office". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved 2015-02-05.
- ^ "Theatrical Releases in 2010: Box-Office Admission Results". Koreanfilm.org. Retrieved 2012-06-04.
- ^ "The Yellow Sea". Rotten Tomatoes. Fandango. Retrieved 2019-12-21.
- ^ "The Yellow Sea". Metacritic. CBS Interactive. Retrieved 2016-12-21.
- ^ Olsen, Mark (2 December 2011). "Movie review: 'The Yellow Sea'". The Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 20 December 2019.
- ^ Dargis, Manohla (1 December 2011). "'The Yellow Sea,' From South Korea". The New York Times. Retrieved 20 December 2019.
- ^ Dargis, Manohla (24 May 2011). "The Yellow Sea: Cannes 2011 Film Review". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved 20 December 2019.
- ^ Bradshaw, Peter (20 October 2011). "The Yellow Sea – review". The Guardian. Retrieved 20 December 2019.
- ^ Kemp, Philip (25 October 2011). "The Yellow Sea review". GamesRadar+. Retrieved 20 December 2019.
- ^ Atkinson, Michael (30 November 2011). "The Yellow Sea | The Village Voice". The Village Voice. Retrieved 20 December 2019.
External links
- Official website (UK)
- The Yellow Sea at the Korean Movie Database (in Korean)
- The Yellow Sea at IMDb
- Template:AllRovi movie
- The Yellow Sea at Rotten Tomatoes
- 2010 films
- 2010 action drama films
- 2010 action thriller films
- 2010s chase films
- South Korean films
- South Korean action drama films
- South Korean action thriller films
- Films about contract killing
- South Korean neo-noir films
- Films set in Jilin
- Films set in Yanbian
- Films shot in China
- Films directed by Na Hong-jin
- Showbox films
- South Korean chase films
- Korean-language films