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Released by: CJ Entertainment
Released on: December 24th, 2013.
Director: Seung-wan Ryoo
Cast: Gianna Jun, Jung-woo Ha, Seung-beom Ryu, Suk-kyu Han
Year: 2013
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The Movie:
The Berlin File starts off with an interesting scene in which a South Korean ghost agent named Pyo (Jung-woo Ha) is scene alone and attempting to recover from what we can only assume was a pretty nasty scrap. He's injured, but he finds the medication that he needs in the most unorthodox of manners, but something is up with this guy. We're interested to learn his story.
From there we meet Jung Jin-soo (Han Suk-kyu), he was once a man with some clout within the organization that Pyo is involved with but we soon learn that he's no longer got the respect he once had because of what Pyo's been up to. But Pyo doesn't answer to Jung, he answers to Ri Hak-soo (Lee Geung-young), the man in charge of the South Korean embassy in Berlin. As the movie unfolds we learn what it is that Pyo's been up to and why, how it's affected Jung and why everyone and their brother seems to be intent on putting a bullet between Pyo's eyes before he can spill his guts.
The Berlin File is quite well paced, it moves quickly and jumps from one scene of action and/or suspense to the next. It's slick, super slick really, and it makes excellent use of its various locations to nice effect. Berlin becomes an intriguing locale, a great spot for the mysterious cast of characters to do their thing and exotic (or maybe historic?) enough to hold our interest in a visual sense. Seung-wan Ryoo would seem to be a director intent on giving his audience exactly what they want with a movie like this, and to his credit, he does exactly that.
The cast do fine work here. There's enthusiasm evident throughout and they handle the dramatic aspects of the dealings as well as they do the fights, chases and shoot outs. The action scenes hit fast and hard and are nicely shot. If you've seen the director's previous City Of Violence you already know he knows how to frame and pace a fight scene - this movie is further evidence of that talent.
But at the same time, to his discredit, he does exactly that. The Berlin File, for all its glossy violence, cool characters and impressive camera movements borrows heavily from films like the Daniel Craig James Bond pictures and the Bourne series kickstarted by The Bourne Identity. Throw in elements from Taken and Enemy Of The State and you wind up with a film that feels like it was made by taking bits and pieces of various mainstream Hollywood action pictures tossed into a blender and puréed into completely palatable but a little too familiar. We want some spice, something interesting to make out cinematic taste buds stand up and take notice and while the dish that Ryoo serves up is an admittedly fairly delicious one, it tastes just like the one we can get down the street. Had there been more effort put into making the story more memorable, The Berlin File could have been a great movie. The skill set is there and the cast are ready for it. Instead what we get is a South Korean retread of movies that we've seen before. Entertaining, at times quite suspenseful, sadly The Berlin File never quite reaches essential.
Video/Audio/Extras:
The Berlin File arrives on DVD in a nice looking transfer framed at 2.35.1. Detail is strong as is texture and color reproduction, when not intentionally tweaked for artistic effect (you'll notice this in a few scenes), generally looks nice and realistic. Skin tones are nice and natural looking here, no obvious waxiness by way of noise reduction to complain about, while black levels are strong if not quite reference quality. There aren't any issues with compression artifacts or noticeable edge enhancement and all in all, the movie fares very well in high definition.
The primary mix here is a Korean Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound mix, but alternate tracks are provided in Korean Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo, English Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound and English Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo. Optional subtitles are provided in English only. Just as you'd expect from a recent action movie, this is a fairly aggressive track with some impressively enveloping moments. Good directional effects are present throughout playback and the levels remain nicely balanced as well. There are no problems with hiss or distortion and all in all, things sound quite good here.
The main extra on the disc is a making of featurettes that runs a lengthy hour and twenty three minutes in length! It's pretty comprehensive as it is made up of cast and crew interviews and a whole lot of behind the scenes footage too. In Korean with English subtitles it lets us in on some of the scheduling challenges that arose during the shoot, how various concepts changed as the production evolved, the wardrobe used by specific characters, stunts, locations, post production and then, finally, the importance of Berlin and how it all ties into what was accomplished with this particular film.
Aside from that we get ten minutes of deleted scenes, menus and chapter selection.
The Final Word:
The Berlin File is a bit too generic for its own good but it's well paced, nicely shot and contains a few solid action set pieces. If it occasionally opts for style over substance the performances are decent and the production values slick. The DVD release from CJ Entertainment looks and sounds quite good and the making of featurettes, which is almost as long as the movie itself, is quite interesting. A pretty solid release of a reasonably entertaining thriller.
