Northern Limit Line
2015; directed by Kim Hak-Soon

One of the all-time box office champs in South Korea, Northern Limit Line is based on a 2002 naval battle between North and South Korea. The film offers up some exciting (and bloody) war scenes, but is ultimately let down by an overlong running time that leans far too much on melodrama and heavy-handed jingoism.

Northern Limit Line uses many of the well-worn tropes of this type of movie. Basically, the plot is one often employed in the genre, with a shell-shocked soldier having to fight his fears in order to win a battle. He's surrounded by a group of walking caricatures: the stern commander that ultimately shows a softer side, the joker, the guy with a new wife at home that you know will be one of the first ones killed, and so on and so forth. Not surprisingly, all of North Koreans shown are almost cartoonish in their villany. Introducing all of these characters and their backstories add more bloat to a film that is already overlong and will have many viewers looking at the clock wondering when the action will kick in.

When it does finally make an appearance, the war scenes are well done, providing a suitable amount of pyrotechnics and bloodshed. Obviously, director Kim Hak-Soon was going for the feel of Saving Private Ryan, and doesn't quite get there -- the camerawork tries to portray kinetics, but often comes off as incoherent -- though the mass amounts of flying body parts helps to cover up the choppiness somewhat.

All of this may be a case of overthinking matters, as at its core, Northern Limit Line is just more of a popcorn mass audience picture (especially for its native South Korean audience) than anything else, and in that respect, it succeeds, delivering a decent two hours of mindless entertainment that you're likely not going to remember any specific aspect of afterwards.

RATING: 5

This movie has been released in North America by Well Go USA and is available on Blu-ray and DVD from Amazon.