Cast Member: Oh Dal-Su

A true gangster epic with brilliant performances, direction and action and not a mockney geezer or wideboy in sight. Simply: great.

‘Crying Fist’ feels fresh and exciting thanks to the considerable skills of its director, the novel use of two storylines happening at the same time and the excellent performances of the leads.

By no means a disaster but a frustratingly mixed bag from a usually consistent and exciting filmmaker.

Definitely not to everyone’s taste, but ink black humour and Choi’s powerhouse performance prevent ‘Oldboy’ from becoming unendurable.

Providing meat for the mind as well as fireworks for the senses ‘Sympathy for Lady Vengeance’ is one of the best films of 2006.

It isn’t a noisy blockbuster with shrill bells and whistles; it is a smartly made drama with a dash of redemption, a healthy chunk of political history and a level of tension cranked up to the zenith.

‘The Good, The Bad, The Weird’ is a great achievement and another success for Kim Jee-woon and is most importantly big, bright and ballistic entertainment that should be seen on a screen as big as possible.

‘The Show Must Go On’ is still packed with bone-dry humour juxtaposed with moments of gripping tension, a feat that should not be underestimated.

‘The Thieves’ is the kind of bloated, star-studded jolly up that you may have been mistaken for thinking that Hollywood had copyrighted.

‘Thirst’ is an enjoyable but flawed experience, a stark, spooky drama with lashings of gallows humour that make up for its slight dips in story and style.

There is, therefore, no surprises in this Korean blockbuster. Yet the winning entertainment value that Kwon Hyeok-Jae imbues his film with renders all of these minor inconveniences mostly irrelevant.

Tense, exciting, thoughtful and often very funny, ‘Tunnel’ has so many facets to be congratulated on that a few paragraphs barely seem appropriate to sing its praises.