The Yellow Sea

Korean filmmaker Na Hong-jin's crime-gone-bad thriller, revolving around a desperate and deep-in-debt taxi driver in Northern China who is hired to kill a man in South Korea, was a box-office hit for its mix of jittery underworld action and social politics. Gu-nam (Ha Jung-woo)—a Chinese citizen of Korean ancestry—finds himself tossed into the middle of unscrupulous cops and warring criminal gangs in a messy scheme of revenge, double-crosses, and hidden motives. Na makes a point of putting viewers inside Gu-nam's head as the chaos breaks around him and he's forced to survive on his wits. While the mobsters aren't all that bright, and the cops are just fumbling with a violent case, all the skill and planning in the world can't prepare the relevant parties for the wild cards that are tossed into every situation here. The strength of The Yellow Sea lies in the dense weave of storylines and Na's rapid-fire direction. Part of the pleasure stems from the fact that the story never feels plotted as it unfolds—and even when the film seems to be careening out of control, it actually winds up coming together quite cleverly. An interesting collision of underworlds steeped in bitter irony and brutal hypocrisy, this nevertheless skews more toward action fans than traditional foreign film audiences. Recommended. (S. Axmaker)