Country: Korea
Genre: Action/Drama
Director: Woo-Suk Kang
Year: 2003

Rating:

WORTH A LOOK
Silmido starts out like a Korean Dirty Dozen. After a botched North Korean raid, in which the South Korean President is injured, the South Koreans retaliate by creating a commando unit composed of death row inmates, whose purpose it is to assassinate the leader of North Korea, […]

Country: Korea
Genre: Action/Drama/Romance
Director: Ha Yu
Year: 2008

Rating:

TRASH CINEMA ESSENTIAL MOVIE
Leave it to the Koreans to create a love story that shames Hollywood with an intelligent adult treatment of forbidden love.
As a young man, the King (Jin-mo Ju) decides to create an honor guard that he can fully trust, drafting young boys and having them trained […]

Country: Korea
Genre: Action
Director: Seung-wan Ryoo
Year: 2006

Rating:

WORTH A LOOK
I’m rarely impressed by directors that constantly call attention to their knowledge of movie genres, and worse still, make their homages extremely obvious so even the densest viewers will be in on the joke. City of Violence is full of Spaghetti Western iconography and music, self conscious […]

Country: Korea
Genre: Comedy/ Action
Director: Jin-gyu Cho
Year: 2001

Rating:

TRASH CINEMA RECOMMENDED MOVIE
In my experience, Korean women have a tendency to be more coarse and blunt than most other Southeast Asian women. I wouldn’t want to piss one off. Now, imagine the most lowclass, least feminine version of the species. You’ve just met Cha Eun-jin (Eun-Kyung Shin), […]

Country: Korea
Genre: Horror/ Suspense/ Comedy/ Drama/ Action
Director: Hong-jin Na
Year: 2008

Rating:

TRASH CINEMA ESSENTIAL MOVIE
American critics are fond of saying that today’s movies are “dark.” The Dark Knight Returns is dark. Sin City is dark. Watchmen is dark. Bullshit. You want dark? Watch Korean movies.
A case in point is Chaser.
After Joong-ho Eom (Yun-seok Kim) was […]

Country: Korea
Genre: Action/ Science Fiction
Director: Si-myung Lee
Year: 2009

Rating:

NOT WORTH YOUR TIME
Imagine an alternative reality in which the United States was a satellite of the Third Reich and everyone pretty much accepted it except for a small group of terrorists who were bent on reestablishing America’s independence. There’s an policeman, born in the United States, […]

Country: Korea
Genre: Action/Drama/Comedy
Director: Ha Yu
Year: 2006

Rating:

WORTH A LOOK
Considering that there are a number of brutal and well-choreographed brawls in A Dirty Carnival utilizing baseball bats, pipes, and knives, why is it that the dominant emotional tone isn’t excitement but rather overwhelming sorrow?
Kim Byung-doo (In-seong Jo) may be a gangster, but his life seems awfully […]

Country: Korea
Genre: Action/Comedy
Director: Seung-wan Ryoo
Year: 2002

Rating:

TRASH CINEMA RECOMMENDED MOVIE
You think women have it tough in the United States? They should be grateful they don’t live in Korea.
Kyeong-seon (Hye-yeong Lee) looks to be in her early 40s. Her degenerate gambler husband has left her with a mountain of debt, which his loan sharks are continually […]

Country: Korea
Genre: Action
Director: Byeong-jin Min
Year: 2001

Rating:

WORTH A LOOK
Let’s face it - Out Of Justice is a mess. The plot is needlessly complicated and confusing. The action scenes and stunts are poorly choreographed and executed. The direction by writer/director Byeong-jin Min is overly stylized, to the point that it pulls you out of the picture. […]

Country: Korea
Genre: Drama/Action/Comedy
Director: Woo-Suk Kang
Year: 2003

Rating:

TRASH CINEMA RECOMMENDED MOVIE
Public Enemy follows the separate stories of two men, but you just know that they’re fated to meet.
Cheol-jung Kang (Kyung-gu Sol) is a screwed up cop, the type who robs drug dealers of their product so he can sell it himself, but Internal Affairs can’t pin […]