Tae-poong (2005)

User Rating:

5.8/10   

Director:

Kyung-Taek Kwak

Writer:

Kyung-Taek Kwak (writer)

Release Date:

14 December 2005 (South Korea)

Genre:

Action | Drama | Thriller

Tagline:

Revenge Is A Force Of Nature!

Plot:

A modern-day pirate plans a massive attack on North and South Korea.

Plot Keywords:

Pirate | Revenge | Nuclear Waste | Hatred | Typhoon

Awards:

4 nominations

Cast

Dong-Kun Jang	...	SIn
Jung-Jae Lee	...	Gang Se-jong
Mi-yeon Lee	...	Choi Myeong-ju
David Lee McInnis	...	Somchai (as David McInnis)
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
John David Dix	...	(voice)
Wook Heo	...	Team Manager Choi
David No	...	Leather Jacket
Chatthapong Pantanaunkul	...	Toto

Directed by
Kyung-Taek Kwak

Writing credits (in alphabetical order)
Kyung-Taek Kwak		writer

Cinematography by
Kyung-Pyo Hong

Film Editing by
Simon K. Park

Art Direction by
Chang-gil Gang

Makeup Department
Seo-young Kim	....	makeup artist

Art Department
Sung-hoon Kim	....	storyboard artist

Sound Department
Tae-young Choi	....	sound
In-gyu Lee	....	sound
Seung-yeop Lee	....	sound editor
Jun-o Park	....	sound

Visual Effects by
Jason Madigan	....	senior compositor
Kang Sung-Uk	....	visual effects
Danyo Donghyun Yoon	....	pre-visualization artist

Music Department
Simon Leadley	....	scoring engineer

Other crew
Winston Emano	....	publicist
David Magdael	....	publicist
Anne Stulz	....	publicist
Steven Wallace	....	publicist

Distributors

• CJ Entertainment (2006) (South Korea) (theatrical)
• DreamWorks SKG (2006) (USA) (theatrical)
• Encore Films (2006) (Singapore) (theatrical)
• Golden Village Entertainment (2006) (Singapore) (theatrical)
• Paramount Classics (2006) (USA) (theatrical) (subtitled)
• Toei Company (2006) (Japan) (theatrical)
• Canal Film (2008-2009) (Norway) (TV)
• Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment (2006) (Netherlands) (DVD) (rental)
• Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment (2007) (Netherlands) (DVD) (retail)

Other Companies

• HFR  dailies
• HFR  digital cinema
• Trackdown Digital  music recorded and mixed at

Also Known As:

Typhoon (International: English title) (USA) (literal English title)

MPAA:

Rated R for strong violence and brief language.

Runtime:

124 min | Norway:104 min (approx.)

Country:

South Korea

Language:

Korean | English | Thai | Russian | Mandarin

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Certification:

South Korea:15 | Singapore:NC-16 | USA:R | Malaysia:18PL | Netherlands:16 | Norway:15 (TV rating) | Finland:K-18

Filming Locations:

Busan, South Korea

Great and Unique, but could've been better

Like "The Brotherhood of War (Tae Guk Gi)" and "Silmido" this movie touches upon the most sensitive and emotional issue for Koreans while demonstrating an upgrade of the Korean film industry which has been exploding especially since "Swiri" was released in 1998.

Great actors and actress, great performance and the script, but one of the few shortcomings was some background music which was not perfectly consistent with the theme of the movie. For those who are not familiar with the North-South issues, this movie may be confusing to categorize just as an action movie or one with more in-depth interpretation of the political issues.

What viewers should notice though is that these days the South Korean filmmakers enjoy making controversial movies (such as those mentioned above), which reflects their cultural, artistic and political maturity; South Koreans or Americans are very often bad guys and North Koreans are often good guys or poor victims, left with no better choices. In other words, less and less stereotyping.

In the scene where Sin (Jang Dong-Kun) meets his elder sister for the first time in 20 years... I'm telling you, their performance was simply amazing, especially Lee Mi-Yeon's. I even felt sorry for those who don't understand Korean perfectly, having only to depend upon the English subtitles which in no way convey the full meaning and nuance of the totally different Asian language. Obviously they speak in the movie with a very strong (but, of course, perfect) North-Korean accent (this is very impressive too), that particular scene was too outstanding to categorize the entire movie into any single genre.

Depending on the DVD editions, in the last fighting scene between Sin and Kang where Sin says, "...the f***ed up thing is that we understand each other."(English subtitle) What it really means is their ironical situation that they speak the same language (Korean) even though they are enemies.

With better and more consistent background music (and some other improvements not really worth mentioning), I would've given it a 9. (This does not mean that the entire background music sucked. I'm only pointing out those in the car chase and fighting/shooting scenes)