La battaglia di Hansan

My wife turned me to South Korea movies, but while she loves doramas, I am very much into war epics, as I like good war films. I watched all the Korean Civil War mvoies, but this time it is a history piece and a great one!

Epic war movie about 16th century battle in the open sea between Choson Empire and Japanese Empire. It could easily be just another war effort with little sense, but what makes this film a real good try is a very deep and decent portrayal of several main heroes with their inner and outer weaknesses, fears and struggles.

There are no super heroes here, no one flies in the air or breaks walls, nay. Here, real people fight and die either valliantly or cowardly.

Both Japanese and Koreans are depicted like real flesh and blood, sweating and bleeding, afraid or brave.

Final Hansan naval battle is a sheer eye candy but the horrors of war are here, too. People die, ships sink, mistakes are made by both sides during the battle.

The CGI are excellent here, but they are not the main It, the It-thing gere is the human struggle, the huge battle between two great admirals and their wills. This is played so weel and so decently that little doubt remains.

I recommend this tremendous epic film to all history buffs.

A prequel to ROARING CURRENTS, revealing another naval battle that Admiral Yi engaged in roughly five years before the events of that film. From the outset, HANSAN: RISING DRAGON sails over familiar territory; we get an hour or so of setup and character intrigue before the filmmakers let rip with an extensive battle sequence that occupies the second half of the running time. I found the cast undistinguished this time around - there's no Choi Min-sik to bring gravitas to the proceedings - and the CGI effects are only adequate. However, the concentration on military tactics and spectacle makes this a fun, breezy watch.

Unabashedly Korean blockbuster had arguable historical accuracy but Kim Han-min surely treated audience with impressive production values and 'geokbukseon' final battle. That's how weak interrelated subplots and underutilized characters are forgiven.

This is undoubtedly one of the most interesting movies from south Korea. Unfortunately the narrative is a little bit biased. My objections might be far fetched but as a history enthusiast I knew that admiral Yi Soon-Shin was obviously asking the Chinese emperor to aid them but in the battles they showed Koreans fought alone, anything about Ming China didn't really have significant appearances here. It's also noticeable that the samurai army's Japanese obviously spoken in THICK KOREAN accent (why the director didn't hire any Japanese actors? That's bizarre!). I can't understand if they insisted to hire only Koreans, why didn't they hire some dialect/accent coaches to dub spoken Japanese like native speakers? Honestly I'm a bit annoyed by this. My brain interpreted it roughly as the battles between 2 Korean forces, one force is deserters versus the other force is patriots of homeland. I appreciated this movie a lot but my criticism is obvious, this movie is self-centered about Korean narrative of their historical battles. As someone who diagnosed with ADHD and I paid almost $ 7 to watch this movie in the cinema, I can only lament the historical distortion of this movie. Typical anti-Japanese propaganda...sigh (I'm sorry you failed to amaze me! Hansan : rising dragon is not better than Admiral: roaring currents). I rated this movie, 7.2 out of 10.

I have been waiting for this movie for 8 years and I have to say I got what I wanted. The introduction of the movie was done well especially the opening battle. It showed naval warfare from a perspective different from that of the Europeans. The costumes and the sets of the movie was able to show what it would truly have looked like at that time. I find this movie unique in that there are simply not that many movies out there that show the samurai from this perspective which is that of an antagonist, and instead most of the movies seem to show the samurai as these incredibly heroic beings. Speaking of the samurai, their costumes and culture was shown splendidly in the movie.

The Koreans were given a more human quality and were also depicted quite well in terms of costumes and culture.

The climax was simply incredible.

I must say however, the first half of the movie with the large number of names and historical people could confuse some people, especially those not well versed in Korean History or not paying attention. However if you are aware of it, then it is not much of a problem. My say is that if you are looking for a movie to watch in a laid back fashion, its not the best pick.

The movie had a nice soundtrack that went well with movie overall. I'd rate it a 9/10.

Pumped and saddened for the last movie of this trilogy which will mark the great generals death...