The Berlin File

 If you know Korean, you should definitely watch The Berlin File. Otherwise, it's probably going to be confusing. I didn't know what was going on at least half the time, but there was some cool action/spy stuff, and the plot reveal was satisfying. 

I was interested in The Berlin File after I saw the trailer for it, but Roeper never reviewed it, so I had to rely on IMDb. It was rated 6.6, so that was inconclusive, but the top reviewer liked it, so that was good enough for me. It turned out to be insanely confusing. I think you have to watch it twice if you don't speak Korean. They showed text with people's names/professions when we first saw them at the beginning, but it didn't help at all; there wasn't time to commit any part of that to memory, and then I spent the entire rest of the movie just trying to figure out who was who/what was going on.

That made it more satisfying when it was all revealed at the end, though. Every bit of information I managed to figure out was a triumph. It didn't help that there were North Koreans and South Koreans that were all Korean. At least Myeong-soo Dong was wearing a hat for a while so I could get a handle on who he was.

Everything fit together well, and it was interesting. Some of the music choices were bizarre, and so was some of the camerawork. The CIA agent kind of seemed shoehorned in, and his death didn't have as much of an impact as I think it was supposed to. I had a tough time trying to figure out what exactly was going on between the South Korean agent and the Mossad guy. At least I understood loud and clear that Dong told the Arab guy that Pyo was responsible for killing Asim.

I was afraid they were going to have it turn out that Pyo's wife had betrayed North Korea even after we found out she was pregnant, so I'm glad they didn't go that way with it. It would've just been toying with us too much. The North Korean ambassador was supposed to be so friendly with Pyo, though, and he was making his wife sleep with other guys. That wasn’t nice.
The IMDb reviewer commented on how you could really see all the action, but I couldn't. It all went too fast until the last fight in the wheat, which was really well done. They did a great job setting up the poison pen so we'd know exactly what was going on there. I think it's good that Pyo's wife died. I wasn't too attached to her, and he's better off as a lone ranger kind of guy. Now he can go take down Dong's father. That would make a good sequel. I'm sure he'll be successful.

I'm glad the South Korean agent let Pyo go. He was a nice guy. It was cool that they got to have a buddy mission to save Pyo's wife. All the secret agent stuff with passing information was neat, and I liked the commentary on the "old dogs" and the South Korean agent not getting respect anymore, although I had no idea what was going on in half of his scenes. I should probably watch it again, since most of the time I was reading the subtitles instead of watching what was going on.