acroking87 Review of The Berlin File

The Berlin File (2013)

High octane influx of speedy flows: Engaging visual treat!

[7/10 · 19 July 2014]

It doesn't let you get off your seat, doesn't give you a chance to wink an eyelid, has a pretty meticulous attention to detail and a serious, no-nonsense fervor several espionage dramas might be devoid of. Based around the communist holocaust expansion intents of DPRK's covert agents embedded in Europe, the story portrays the protagonist a North Korean Spy Jung-woo Ha's journey of transformations in the unsettling backdrop of a Nuke arms deals gone wrong. Woo ha has an equally skilled spy wife involved with playing a double agent with South Korea betraying him amidst a situation of conflict among his commie allies. The revelation later about how the entire failed-deal was a set up to trap him ignites the turnaround to where his retaliation drives him into defecting to the South Korean agencies. This action drama takes turns swiftly until finally acquiring a high adrenaline makeover into an escape and chase sequence of events to finally acquiring a rather sentimental make-up. The climax renders woo Ha lose his wife succumbing to her injuries being shot from his ex-comrade. With the typical commie spices sprinkled throughout, what The Berlin File does differently is to present a very elaborate perspective from the North Korean agent's angle and the story has not been dragged a lot towards the South Korean characters being highlighted in any manner. Espionage tactics and close quarter combat techniques were uniquely impressive and the protagonist spy showcases a very distinguished trait mix of intelligence, stability and escape methods under fire. Although much of the flow goes like a template spy movie, director Seung-wan Ryoo (of 'Crying Fist' acclaim) has managed to put forward a thrilling work which creates a persona of very researched intelligence agency operations and rises above the usual North and South Korea conflict dramas. The plot has a significant twist, although being that peculiar Korean Cinema zealot that I am, I might have expected an even more disturbing twist during the final encounters, to the tune of Joint Security Area or Chaser. All in all, those in the usual purview of the spy-genre should witness what South Korea has grown to, which is nothing short of an Internationally colored, yet dark(ironically enough) canvas of reality presenting cinema. unique propositions to the movie would be precisely detailed modalities, negligible flaws in the script, a very slight yet pleasant drift away from the usual Korean treatment and that 'never-felt-a-moment-that-was-loose' effect!