Hansan: Rising Dragon
As I’ve started to watch more South Korean action films over the past year, one of the things I appreciate is how the scale of their films. These are just as epic as their American counterparts, and while yes, some can feel rote and predictable, the way they tell their stories is sometimes more imaginative and dense. In his film, “Hansan: Rising Dragon,” co-writer/director Han-min Kim has told a large-scale military story in Korean history, but not without the perspective of their aggressors, as well. It’s a swing that pays off handsomely when the battle gets going.
“Hansan” is actually a prequel to Han-min Kim’s 2014 film, “The Admiral: Roaring Currents,” and is the second of his trilogy about battles led by 16th Century Admiral Yi Sun-sin (Park Hae-il). I have not seen “The Admiral” yet, but “Hansan” has me interested to seek it out because of the way Kim’s stages the action. The film’s final 30 minutes is almost entirely a restaging the Battle of Hansan between the Yi Sun-sin-led forces and the Japanese aggressors, led by Wakisaka Yasuharu (Yo-Han Byun). We begin hearing about a new battleship with a dragon head at its bow, intended to ram and destroy ships. It has a weakness, however, one that Yi Sun-sin hopes to exploit. The film’s 130 minutes deals a lot with military strategy, spying and preparation for the battle of the title.
“Hansan: Rising Dragon” is very much nationalistic propaganda to aggrandize the stature of a legend. That isn’t a criticism- Hell, American war films have been doing that since the debut of film- but a description of what the film is. Do we learn anything insightful about Yi Sun-sin? I’m sure that question will be best answered by watching Kim’s trilogy as a whole; this film is about the ways in which Yi tries to adapt his time in ground military to the sea in an attempt to beat back the invading Japanese forces, whose goal is to take over Asia, starting with Korea. For the most part, it’s a fairly dry affair, but the film more than makes up for it with the spectacle it makes of the battles at the end. The battle is staged wonderfully, as we watch both great military minds working through what the other one is giving them, and allowing us to get a decent degree of tension from a battle which we can easily look up the historical record of. It’s a thrilling piece of filmmaking that any fan of war films will be sure to enjoy. I cannot wait to see the rest of Yi Sun-sin’s story, as told by Han-min Kim. It’s an exciting discovery.
