After a garbled opening this South Korean flick eventually develops into a pleasantly bombastic Bond-style adventure.

| Jul 13, 2022

As desperately overblown as anything Hollywood has ever concocted.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Apr 27, 2007

Bad acting butts heads with bad-ass action.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Apr 27, 2007

Limps along like an arthritic dog.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Apr 27, 2007

Like a poor man(TM)s Tony Scott movie.

| Apr 27, 2007

Pure action-thriller adventure is ruined with an overly melodramatic second half.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Apr 27, 2007

Caught up in a triple vortex of poor scripting, unexciting action and leads you couldn't care less about, the pic boasts good production values but little else.

| Aug 1, 2006

Typhoon aims high but misses the emotional mark in most instances, resulting in some awkward melodramatics.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jun 24, 2006

Director Kyung-Taek Kwak orchestrates all this with flair, but leading man Lee doesn't have much to offer beyond a steely stoicism, and Jang's histrionic villainy borders on the parodic.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jun 16, 2006

The movie delivers the same old American action-flick themes of catastrophe narrowly averted, but the Korean version alters the meaning from triumph to sorrow.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jun 16, 2006

It has a fair sense of documentary reality, and the action sequences -- from shootout to car chase to a commando takedown of a tanker on the high seas to a final knife fight -- are extremely well managed.

| Jun 2, 2006

In Typhoon, there are plenty of guns being fired in front of the camera, but behind it [director] Kwak apparently had his safety catch in place.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jun 2, 2006

Typhoon is an assembly-line thriller from South Korea that just as well could have been made in Hollywood.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/4 | Jun 2, 2006

An exhausting combination of generic thriller, political tract and sentimental weepie.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Jun 2, 2006

Ambitious and impressive, both in its provocative themes and superb production design using striking sets and locations in Korea, Russia and Thailand, this handsome epic amply rewards audiences willing to go the distance.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 2, 2006

A reasonably entertaining, very Korean take on the kind of stuff Jerry Bruckheimer produces by reflex -- and that's in no way an insult to either Bruckheimer or Typhoon.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jun 1, 2006

It loses its sense of political urgency by relying on melodramatic clichs (the bad guy has a dying sister) and rhythms that are all too familiar from the big-budget American films it sets out to emulate.

Full Review | Original Score: C | May 31, 2006

The director's hokey melodrama and derivative action, when coupled with his inability to create any synergy between form and content, ultimately turns Typhoon into an insipid drag.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | May 31, 2006