Movie: Hwanghae (Yellow Sea)

The second Korean movie i have seen in a short while after Akmareul Boattda and another interesting one.

Hwanghae is about a taxi driver, Gu-Nam, who lives in the Korean area of China. His wife left for South-Korea and he has debts, his attempt to gamble to get some extra money fail miserably which results in him being even deeper in debt. One day he gets an offer that will free him from all his debts, all he has to do is go to South Korea and kill a man. He accepts the offer without knowing anything about the man he has to kill and goes to South Korea to do the job and hoping he will find his wife. When he arrives in South Korea things go from bad to worse. The killing is a bit more complicated than he anticipated, and before he gets the chance to kill the man he gets accused of a murder he didn’t commit and is chased through out the country. Not only by the police but by a bunch of different groups of gangsters that all have their own reasons to find and kill him (and each other).

An interesting story and movie that does get a bit tricky after a while because there are a lot of criminals introduced to the story in a short while, which makes it a bit confusing remembering who belongs to which group and why. Hwanghea also lasts a bit too long as it’s over 2,5 hours. But that’s something that Akmareul Boattda also suffered from. Nonetheless it doesn’t really bother as the story keeps developing. What did bother me was the ‘shakey’ camera movements from time to time. It’s like you are on a boat with strong winds.

Just like Akmareul Boattda Hwanghae is heavy with the violence. While American and European movies usually have bad guys with big guns the Koreans only seem to have big sharp knives and axes. Needless to say that adds a lot to the gorey part of the movie as all the hacks, cuts and slices are perfectly captured.

So, the second Korean movie i see in a short while and another recommendation. That is if you can stomach a lot of extreme violence.

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