A Korean man in China takes an assassination job in South Korea to make money and find his missing wife. But when the job is botched, he is forced to go on the run from the police and the gangsters who paid him.
Writer-director Na Hong-Jin achieves a vibe of urban desolation right off the bat, and deepens the mayhem with acutely observed and charged details about illegal-immigrant life.
– Michael Atkinson,
Village Voice,
29 Nov 2011
rotten:
The Yellow Sea is far less interested in character than in choreographing pursuit scenes spiced with Asia Extreme levels of violence.
– David Fear,
Time Out New York,
29 Nov 2011
fresh:
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.
– Manohla Dargis,
New York Times,
1 Dec 2011
fresh:
A breakneck mix of bone-crunching freneticism and bloody close-quarters knife-fighting with a strand of romantic melancholy.