Blue

This Korean military-themed will seem exceedingly familiar to western audiences, and most certainly would have in 2003, albeit if less so than it did to domestic viewers. And naturally, because this is a Korean film, the clichés of a couple of decades worth of American naval thrillers are balanced by the clichés of the Korean Romance®, which dictates that two lifelong friends and Navy underwater salvage specialists (Kim Yeong-ho and BICHUNMOO brooder Shin Hyeon-jun) will have their friendship tested by the superior officer (Shin Eun-kyung) they both love and their lives tested by an almost laughable number of mishaps that occur both during their training exercises and real-world rescue missions they undertake. In fact, so many "incidents" occur in the name of hoary melodrama in this otherwise technically proficient movie that I'm surprised the Korean Navy would want to be associated with it in any way. It actually makes them look bad.

Blue is not a focused film, several stories about two childhood friends in a navy scuba division one after another interweaves into a split thriller and drama.

While a potent way of telling a story, as life is never one-faceted, it comes out surprisingly uninvolving. Even more surprisingly as the handcraft is good.

Reasons for this is partly Shin Eun-Kyung, who is dull and uninspired as an actress, partly the editing in the thriller segments which could have been tighter.

Shin Hyeon-Jun on the other hand does a good job, together with the rest of the cast.

The Korean military drama "Blue" borrows heavily from "Top Gun" and "Le grand bleu" and tells the story of two Korean Navy divers who fall for the same woman and struggle with their hard duty.

The film is well done technically but I wasn't too much impressed by the story. It takes a couple of turns too many. The last hour is the only part of the film that seems to focus on one specific adventure. It's the only coherent part of the movie - the rest is all over the place. It's a love story, a film about friendship, a boot camp movie, a military thriller, a diving adventure - and much more. That doesn't mean it's a richly themed film but only one that doesn't seem to know where to go. As I mentioned, the film gets tighter towards the end and gets into a kind of "Abyss"-routine. It's pretty solid in that part.

The characters are OK, the actors playing them are good (the most famous face being Eun-Kyung Shin from "My Wife is a Gangster") and the technical aspects of "Blue" are solid. The movie overall is average due to its lack of storytelling focus. It's far from a bad film but a surprisingly uninvolving one due to the problems mentioned above.

I'd rate it 6/10

I really liked seeing Shin Hyeon-jun in a comedic role as opposed to the somber, serious characters he has played in Bichunmoo and The Gingko Bed. I wasn't sure what I expected from this movie, but it wasn't the comic flair that he showed in this movie. His performance reminds me of Robert Downey Jr. in Chaplin. He's really good at physical comedy. I thought the story line pretty good, and the side stories serve to emphasize the differences in the two male characters, one is "by the book", the other is not. I would have liked to see the movie extended a little further, to see where the characters ended up, but it was okay ending where it did. The CGIs were a little disappointing, but the story makes up for it. All in all, I think it was a really good movie.