Na Hong-jin’s The Yellow Sea

For the ethnic Korean-Chinese Joseonjok living in the Northeast Yanbian prefecture, life is difficult. Many aspire to work in South Korea, but often return embittered by the experience, fueling anti-Korean sentiments within their own community and China at large. One Joseonjok cab-driver reluctantly agrees to commit one of the murders Koreans evidently just won’t do, simply for an opportunity to look for his missing wife in Na Hong-jin’s dark thriller, The Yellow Sea (a.k.a. The Murderer, trailer here), which opens today in New York.

The world is out to get Gu-nam. He still owes sixty large for his wife’s transit fee, but he has lost contact with, leading everyone to suspect she has left him for someone else. After fleecing the cabbie in mahjong, hitman and human-trafficker Myun-ga offers him a deal. If he goes to Seoul and kills the man living at a certain address, all will be forgiven. Not having a lot of options, Gu-nam goes along with the plan, hoping to track down his wife while in Korea.

Unfortunately, killing the man at the designated address proves quite complicated, at least for a novice like Gu-nam. Yet, as soon as he devises a workable plan, someone else executes the contract. Things get messy. Not guilty, if not necessarily innocent, Gu-nam suddenly finds himself on the lam. However, the born loser is surprisingly hard to kill, forcing Myun-ga to personally take care of business. His tool of choice is an axe.

Sea is the sort of thriller where the audience has Peter Boyle’s guarantee from The Candidate. No matter what happens, Gu-nam loses, so as long as he stays alive, acting as the spanner in the works, he is sort of winning. Just looking at Ha Jung-woo’s Gu-nam will make you want to pop an aspirin. Formerly the creepy psychopath in Na’s The Chaser, he is quite the sad sack here, but never to a cringe-inducing extent. In fact, he is rather credible rising to the occasion during the action scenes. Likewise, his Chaser co-star Kim Yun-seok is an electric pseudo-villain-slash-antihero.

Yet in the film’s most conspicuous weakness, the motivations of Myun-ga’s criminal co-conspirator, “legitimate businessman” Kim Tae-won, are rather ill-defined beyond general nefariousness. Frankly, it would be devilishly hard to explain why any of this was set in motion, but once it is, Na excels at the gritty in-your-face action. There are not a lot of guns in Sea. Weapons tend to be makeshift, but effective.

Sea definitely follows in the angst-ridden noir tradition of The Wrong Man and The Fugitive, but it crashes more vehicles and builds up a heck of a body count. Though grimly naturalistic, it is a fully satisfying action thriller, definitely recommended when it opens today (12/2) in New York at the Village East.

The French Fugitive: Point Blank

Don’t call it a discovery. Hollywood has already come calling French director Fred Cavayé. Unfortunately, it was Paul Haggis who remade his debut feature as The Next Three Days, but it still counts. He might have knocked the wind out of James Bond, but the jinxed former Scientologist should not derail Cavayé based on his sophomore outing, Point Blank (trailer here), which opens in New York this Friday.

In the tradition of Dr. Richard Kimball, Samuel Pierret is the wrong man—an innocent man. He also happens to be a nurse’s assistant with a very pregnant wife. After saving the life of a thug convalescing in his hospital, Pierret receives a grim ultimatum—either he delivers his shady patient, stone-cold safecracker Hugo Sartet, or he will never see his wife alive again. Pulled into a wider criminal conspiracy, Pierret learns Sartet’s kidnapping accomplice is the least of his concerns. A battalion of crooked cops are out to them both deader than dead.

There is something refreshingly old school about Blank. Rather than try to dazzle viewers with huge special effects spectacles or outlandish stunt work, Cavayé earns his thrills the honest way, forcing his characters to jump from ledges, bluff their way out of tight spots, and run for their lives through the streets of Paris.

A versatile actor, Lellouche makes a credible wrongly accused everyman in the Hitchcockian tradition. However, the film really belongs to Roschdy Zem as Sartet. Those who bemoan the paucity of masculine movies stars need to check out his filmography. Quietly intense and smoothly charismatic, Zem makes a killer noir anti-hero, occupying that rare cinematic zone of true moral ambiguity. As Sartet, he exemplifies screen presence. Overdue for international stardom after memorable appearances in films like Outside the Law, 36th Precinct, and The Girl from Monaco, Blank should finally settle the matter.

Cavayé also earns breakout props for Blank. Tightly paced and sharply executed, it is quite an agile thriller, even showing the occasional flash of mordant wit. He also demonstrates a legitimate talent for choreographing near riot scenes, deftly balancing the mass chaos with the need to show the characters’ action with clarity.

Indeed, it is easy to buy into Blank as it propels forward at a breakneck pace. Yet, it never loses sight of the gritty personal element. Even if he is not the major protagonist per se, the film is perfect star vehicle for Zem, as well as an effective showcase for Cavayé’s flair for the genre. Highly recommended, Blank opens this Friday (7/29) in New York at the Landmark Sunshine.