20
A cheap-looking action movie that sabotages itself at almost every turn.
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What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
50
The movie is executed by director Kwak Kyung-Taek with flair, technical polish and tumescent firepower that the shriveled cinemas of Hong Kong and Japan can no longer match. But every gesture feels synthetic, from the back story about North-South separation to massage the emotions of the home audience, to the 24-style globe-hopping nuclear-terrorism premise.
70
Eventually develops into a pleasantly bombastic Bond-style adventure.
50
This may be the biggest production in Korean-film history, but viewers should search elsewhere for a better sampling of what the country has to offer.
63
The action come fast and thick, and the sentimentality reaches near-operatic proportions.
50
Chicago Tribune by Michael Wilmington
As silly movies go, this one is at least pretty exciting. But in the end, Typhoon leaves you feeling as exiled from the two Koreas as Sin is.
25
Seattle Post-Intelligencer by Sean Axmaker
The humorless and self-important execution attempts an operatic scale but only succeeds in sinking the remnants of the story's integrity. By the time it makes landfall, this incoherent production has blown itself out.
70
Washington Post by Stephen Hunter
A few others have compared this to a James Bond movie, but it's more of a piece with a Tom Clancy movie; it never leaves the real world that far behind, 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.
25
Mainstream moviegoers will be put off by the subtitles, and art-house fans will be insulted by the story's shallowness.