The Berlin File

The Berlin File boasts knockout action setpieces that provide an impressive big-budget showcase for Ryoo Seung-wan's technical smarts.

As soon as The Berlin File takes flight with its exhilarating action set pieces, memories of any muddles evaporate amid the tension and vivid engagement with settings, from courtyards to fields.

The Berlin File keeps narrative coherence far down on a priority list that privileges expertly choreographed hand-to-hand combat, hair-raising stunt work...and such familiar genre accoutrements as secret rooms hidden behind bookshelves, shiny metallic attaché cases, and pens concealing fast-acting vials of poison.

There is something sharp, exciting and more original tucked within The Berlin File — and it is in moments a sleek, crackling film — but it all feels somehow misshapen.

The film is a sporadically entertaining, modestly ambitious shoot 'em up that frequently succumbs to spelling out its subtext.

The story feels fairly perfunctory — not to mention unnecessarily knotty — but the well-connected leads do their best to ground it. And while this one falls far short of the “Bourne” films that serve as an influence, the intense action scenes consistently deliver some solid genre jolts.

Though the director includes a few brief humdingers — a fight that involves a Rube Goldberg–ish tangle of wires; some munitions-fueled mayhem in a farmhouse — it’s not enough to keep viewers from wishing they were thumbing through a John le Carré novel instead.

This movie is terrible, with a well-done action at the opening this movie failed to deliver the puzzle. i watch the movie for 100 minutes and still dont understand what the hell is going on?

Moué, un film d'espionnage avec des Sud et des Nord-Coréens à Berlin...? hein ? comme pendant la guerre froide ? enfin, façon de parler. T'en vois beaucoup des Coréens à Berlin, toi ? D'accord, il y a aussi les Russes et le Mossad... mais quand même, c'est vraiment n'importe quoi cette affaire embrouillée qui se traîne de toute façon comme un escargot sur le retour... (il est très fatigué). On a tous les clichés du genre, un genre souvent chiant et rarement intéressant, ma foi... mais qui cumule ici toutes les tares... du genre. Parfois, un peu d'action mais elle se révèle tellement mal faite, mal filmée, mal montée, mal fichue qu'on préfère lorsqu'il ne se passe rien ou que les Coréens du Sud continuent leur parano sur les Coréens du Nord. Et inversement. Bon, bref, on s'en fout total de cet Agent, pas crédible deux secondes et complètement à l'ouest.