Movie: The Berlin File (15)Rating: 4/5South Korean action thrillers are quite interesting to watch. Indeed I prefer watching mostly and rather, only action, drama and thriller films. So when I came across this action thriller THE BERLIN FILE starring one of my favourite actors Ha Jung-woo, I couldn't resist myself from watching it, and that too in high quality. However, I felt quite confused at times due to the script being convoluted to a great extent. What keeps you engaged is the brilliant action. THE BERLIN FILE has really brilliant action sequences, and that's a major reason why one finds it somewhat easy to ignore the flaws. Visually, the film is a gem. Story wise, it's a masterpiece. Execution wise, it's great but not excellent. Ha Jung-woo is extremely amazing in the role he plays. He's simply the best thing about the film. Just watch him in the action sequences and in the climax: his performance literally will blow your mind. Jun Ji-hyun is decent, and so is Ryoo Seung-bum: he's a firecracker when it comes to his act which he handles perfectly, and that's something which makes his character realistic.The director Ryoo Seung-wan does a decent job by handling the screenplay and direction well. The editing too is fine. But as said before, the execution is the only thing which needed to be better as in the beginning, after the first scene, it's difficult to follow the story as it keeps getting convoluted and things get more complicated when scenes end without much explanation. However, the film never loses its focus and manages to entertain you, leading to a thrilling climax which makes you forget rather every single flaw.THE BERLIN FILE is a powerful, breathtaking and intense action thriller which is a must see for the lovers of this genre. For others, I can easily recommend it, though they won't be easily able to follow the film in the beginning. Still, watch the film because the kind of action it offers is the one you won't have seen before.

I really liked The Berlin File because of different reasons. First of all in the movie we can see agents from different countries such as North Korea, South Korea, the Israeli Mossad, German and American police(the CIA). The main characters are well developed and we can also understand why they behave in a certain way or not. Therefore I am looking forward to watch The Berlin File 2.

It is time for North Korea to abandon Communism and defect to the South! Just as DDR abandoned Communism and joined democracy, so should DPRK become part of the South. One Korea in capitalist heaven! As far as the film goes, it was made to ease that transition, just as the Gangham style conquered to world so will North give up Communism and become part of the united Korea.The film was just another film of action. Seen many like that in my past.I would love to add more lines of text but I am not sure what to add, because film was average.

Being away from Korea at the moment, I only caught this film a few days ago. I'm quite a fan of 'serious' spy films like The Ipcress File or the more recent adaptation of Tinker, Tailor, Solider, Spy, so I decided to give this rather sombre-looking film a watch. For me, personally, there was almost nothing to dislike before I started watching; having seen Shiri, the first Korean spy-action film, as a kid, I was very excited about Han Seok-kyu returning to a more gritty role of an experienced Cold Warrior intelligence officer. Han mainly plays the role to be reminiscent of his previous appearance in Eye for an Eye (눈 에는 눈, 이 에는 이), wherein he portrays a veteran somewhat disillusioned with the ideals and organisation he fights for, but still employing his keen sense against his opponents. While not as off-the-rails as his character Baek Seong-chan in Eye for an Eye, Han's new-found propensity to add a little frenzy to the emotional mix added suspense to the unfolding plot.At the very basics, The Berlin File revolves around a botched arms deal between rogue state and non-state actors, whose ripple effects bring in the wider circle of the international intelligence community. Amidst the intrigue is the more personal relationships between the spies themselves, whether between those on the same side, or beyond ideological borders. To be honest, I found the overall story to be entertaining, but as others point out, somewhat convoluted for the fairly frenetic pace of the action and movements. It was quite clear that the film-makers were going for a kind of John le Carre flavour to the distinctly Korean mix of action and drama, even going so far as to actually use a copy of his novel The Spy Who Came in from the Cold as a prop in a scene (a German copy, which was a nice touch). Ha Jeong-woo and Ryu Seung-beom were ideal as North Korean fixers, the former having previously played a stoic action-based North Korean in the brutal 2010 film The Yellow Sea. Their tale of corrupted brotherhood might even have been an allegory of generational changes in the DPRK, just as Han Seok- kyu's conflicts with his own organisation might just symbolise such tumult in South Korea.Something that I did find rather disappointing was the limited role that Jeon Ji-hyeon, a decent actress in her own right, played in the story. I admit, I haven'이 seen most of her films, but in those that I am familiar with, she is known for her own brand of strong, spunky femininity, which allowed her to play the lead across a variety of genres. I wasn'이 so keen that in The Berlin File, she was reduced to a glorified damsel-in- distress, meekly awaiting her man to rescue her. Not that I was expecting her to bust out the wire-action as in her previous film The Thieves, which dazzled with glamour and wit as opposed to this deliberately dour and heavy-set piece, but I did want her to be given more initiative in how her character was presented. Nonetheless, Jeon Ji-hyeon does well to fulfil the position of an understated heroine.Furthermore, while trying to avoid spoilers as much as possible, I can'이 say I cared much for the blunt and unrelenting use of action scenes toward the end, albeit only for a sequence of, say, 10 minutes or so. If John le Carre and other 'hard' spy fiction wants to tell us anything, it's that the real world of espionage is far-flung from the glitzy fantasy landscape of James Bond, and even the action-fuelled chaos of the Bourne series. The real world of intelligence, apparently, is more painstaking paperwork and dead drops, than shoot-outs and gadgets. The first half of The Berlin File pays faithful homage to the slow and uneasy atmosphere of Western works with similar premise, while ratcheting up the action factor towards the end, probably, to appeal to a wider audience. Don'이 get me wrong, it's reasonably well done and much less gratuitous than otherwise might have been (looking at you, IRIS). My only gripe, as perhaps befitting a le Carre fan, is that it wasn'이 as tedious as it should have been!All in all, I think that a film is a decent one when the worst that can be said about it is that it's a "step forward for the Korean film industry", while the best praise for it puts it up there along with the global standard. And globally appealing it is too, partly due to the script supervision of an American film-maker that made the English and German dialogue less inept than Korean films in the past have allowed. I certainly hope to see The Berlin File gather at least some recognition outside of Korea, and maybe even to see more of its kind in the future.