L'impero e la gloria - Roaring Currents

full throttle navel action that has to be seen to believe. after a slow but important first half this korean movie goes into high gear with an all out battle film that is very rewarding. totally engrossing and very entertaining.

i have seen my fair share of Asian war epics and this was one of the more enjoyable one, a bit melodramatic but thats fine. as a costume drama its gorgeous and with limited cgi it all looks very realistic.i must say it looks stunning from start to finish

if your looking for something epic to watch and you don't mind subtitle's then this one is for you plus all gaming buffs take not this is how to make a battle movie.

Recommend reading about Yi Sun Shin before watching this movie. It's relatively difficult to follow the first half of this movie if you don't know something about him. Do yourself a favor and wiki Yi sun shin. It will give a quick glimpse into the man and back drops of this conflict. All historical accounts indicate that one ship went against superior numbers and he won. There are a lot of dramatic interpretations, but you will experience general gist of how he exploited fear in his own men and Japanese navy which suffered heavy casualties by Yi over 6 years of war. One other note: Korean uses a flat bottom ship. Japanese uses more traditional design. Korean navy has zero turtle iron clad ship in this engagement. That should be enough to enjoy one of the best ancient naval battle captured by this movie.

Almost seems like the Korean version of 300 with an underdog nation going to battle with a power that's overwhelming, but thanks to their admiral, who shows no compromise, they journey ahead into one of the best naval battles I've seen on screen.

At times the story did get too sappy. For the most part, the filmmakers went for art over realism to make the emotional scenes very dramatic, but those battleship fights were worth the built up of the tactical aspects of war that began the film, which was mostly really great speeches from the admiral to rally the troops.

Not bad South Korea.

The Admiral Roaring Currents is a very good period battle picture in the same vein as John Woo's Red Cliff. Although this film is quite large in scope, it is a smaller scale epic than the massive masterpiece Red Cliff. Choi Min Sik of Oldboy and I Saw The Devil fame is an admiral who command the small in number naval fleet versus the massive invading Japanese fleet. The few stood against many is a common and effective theme in this sort of film. Forgive my ignorance, but my knowledge of Korean/Japanese history is limited. So I have no idea how historically accurate this movie is. I did enjoy it regardless and in my opinion, I thought this film is very good. The storytelling and acting is solid and the film looks real sharp as well. The battle/action scenes are in abundance and while there is CGI used in the film, it is used well and classier than most Hollywood productions. I did think this film needed more blood as this is a battle picture. However, this is a minor critique as this film is indeed roaring. It also is in my book a very engaging and well crafted movie.

I stumbled upon this movie without having ever heard of it, and boy was I glad to watch it. It's the movie about one of the most famous Korean generals in Korean history during a crucial battle in the war with Japan. The acting in the movie was solid, even if I didn't understand the language. The naval battle scenes and how Admiral Yi used naval tactics to fight his enemy were realistic and breathtaking at the same time. I'd compare this with the 300: Rise of an Empire movie, with far less CGI, fantasy elements, better acting, and more realistic portrayal of naval battle. It's pretty amazing what they could do with ships back in those days.

The history/characters in the movie is a little hard to follow if you don't know about it beforehand or don't speak Korean/Japanese, but I still enjoyed it quite a bit and learned a little bit of Korean history in the process.