How entertaining? ★★☆☆☆
Thought provoking? ★☆☆☆☆ 20 June 2013
This article is a review of THE BERLIN FILE. |
“For someone in my position, you always have to have an answer,” North Korean Ambassador to Germany
For lovers of espionage, we are in a golden age, on the small and silver screens. The television offers up the likes of ALIAS, 24 and CHUCK; and at the cinema: MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – GHOST PROTOCOL, SKYFALL, the Jason Bournes (the less said about LEGACY the better) and TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY. The standards vary, but there is enough quality to have lofty benchmarks. Each new entry from now on surely must grip you in a vice otherwise it will not pass muster? Unfortunately, the anachronistically titled THE BERLIN FILE, an epithet harking back to 1960s Cold War intrigues, is convoluted, poorly scripted and over-acted. There’s dialogue like, “Revenge is a dish best served cold”; fair enough coming out of Ricardo Montalban’s mouth in WRATH OF KHAN, but that was over thirty years ago.
For lovers of espionage, we are in a golden age, on the small and silver screens. The television offers up the likes of ALIAS, 24 and CHUCK; and at the cinema: MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – GHOST PROTOCOL, SKYFALL, the Jason Bournes (the less said about LEGACY the better) and TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY. The standards vary, but there is enough quality to have lofty benchmarks. Each new entry from now on surely must grip you in a vice otherwise it will not pass muster? Unfortunately, the anachronistically titled THE BERLIN FILE, an epithet harking back to 1960s Cold War intrigues, is convoluted, poorly scripted and over-acted. There’s dialogue like, “Revenge is a dish best served cold”; fair enough coming out of Ricardo Montalban’s mouth in WRATH OF KHAN, but that was over thirty years ago.
Hopes were high for Seung-wan Ryoo’s latest, director of the bonkers and adrenaline-driven THE CITY OF VIOLENCE, a breathtaking ballet of havoc. However, THE BERLIN FILE joins his other misfires: ARAHAN and CRYING FIST; sharing the former’s weak plotting, and the latter’s emotional syrup. There are some solid action sequences, but the players are so irritating in their conception that it matters little who makes it to the conclusion.
Opening on a guy, Pyo Jong-seong (Ha Jung-woo – star of the quite frankly awesome THE YELLOW SEA and THE CHASER), running into an apartment, getting a fish out of a fridge-freezer, extracting a syringe, and injecting himself. Then the movie rewinds three hours to a barely coherent arms deal. Pyo Jong-Seong is a North Korean spook, known as “Ghost”. The deal is being eavesdropped on by his colleagues as well as the South Koreans. Needless to say, it goes sour, and Pyo Jong-seong demos what a badass he is, despatching South Korean agents in nonplussed adroitness. He meets his opposite number on a roof, Jeong Jin-soo (Han Suk-kyu), deftly escaping him and landing the latter in trouble with his South Korean colleagues for botching the capture. Jeong Jin-soo remains very angry for the remainder.
Meanwhile Ghost’s wife, Ryeon Jung-hee (Gianna Jun – THE THIEVES), is an undercover translator, ordered by her boss, the North Korean ambassador, to sleep with a German bureaucrat to cement some undertaking; a crude signpost of employer immorality. Jong-seong and Jung-hee’s marriage is already estranged, but when she becomes labelled a traitor, Ghost breaks with his country to protect her. Sent on their trail is Dong Myeong-soo (Ryu Seung-beom – GUNS & TALKS), a sociopathic-assassin-ambitious-type, you know the kind. THE BERLIN FILE then becomes a melee for some McGuffin, and by the climax, who really cares?