Jeontoo

Tedious. Another big budget movie overflowing with nationalist, anti-Japanese pride. Japanese are portrayed as one dimensional, evil caricatures.

Lovely cinematography, sets and costumes but I think it could have been a little shorter than 2hours 15 minutes. Lots of testosterone fuelled violence and tension. Nothing graphic except for a couple of fake heads rolling on the ground. No nudity.

I know this is a Korean movie, so it is to be expected that the Japanese will not exactly be the good guys. And that would be perfectly okay. But the level of evilness and sadism with which they are portrayed is so extremely exaggerated, it's comical. You can see them laughing like cartoon villains while committing the most heinous atrocities you can imagine. All characters actually are very cartoonish, the entire film doesn't really seem to know what it wants to be. At times it feels like an action movie that doesn't take itself too seriously, in the next scene it's a serious war movie again. It's a mess.

First things first: the Japanese are portrayed as quite the evil people here. You may have an issue with how evil they are (supposed to be). Remember overall this is a movie. In many war movies enemies are shown as evil - to a degree where you may question their humanity.

So if you swallow that (suspend your disbelief), there is a war movie here that is quite violent and quite tension filled from start to finish. Also there are some degrees and some shades of grey in certain characters at least. Not the best Korean war movie, but the effort, the effects, the stunts and the acting are all rock solid to say the least.

Propaganda? Don't know. Factual? Don't know. Does it matter? No. It's a good afternoon movie. Watch it for the action. Yes, it gets pretty gruesome at times, but it's a war movie. Japanese Imperial army vs patriots. Sure it's a bit lop-sided as to be expected when another country invades. There were some unbelievable moments as others suggested, however, watch for yourself. Beautiful countryside, good battles, Fun overall. Only downside for me was the translation to English. It didn't match very well, but I was able to figure out what they were talking about.

This is a disgrace to korean movie industry. The story is barely based on true story. Japanese army depicted as a stupid boys playing around in the battlefield. When there is a sniper shooting at them, their first reaction is not to hide and cover, instead they stupidly freeze on the spot and letting the enemy killed them. Ridiculous