Hansan: Rising Dragon

400 years ago, Korea is threatened by the powerful Japanese Imperial navy, but a daring admiral has a secret weapon… the dragon-headed, turtle-shaped warships known as Geobukseon. With these maritime monsters, and a little bit of derring-do, they hope to turn the tide of the war.

Hansan: Rising Dragon is a Korean film, and it tells the tale of the successes of the 16th-century Korean national hero Yi Sun-shin, with a specific focus on the Battle of Hansan Island in 1592, a (SPOILER) Korean victory that is widely considered to be both a feat of strategy and of technology.

For the most part, this film is just a little too procedural, at least for a good chunk of the beginning. The political maneuvering of the various factions on both the Korean and the Japanese sides can feel like a bit of a slog. There’s too many scenes where a bunch of dudes all sit in a square, cross-cross-applesauce, arguing about their various political and/or war options, until eventually one or more of them get mad at some of the other ones in the square, and they lurch up and draw their swords, or at least, they threaten to draw their swords, or maybe they get mad and then stomp off out of the room in a snit, or perhaps they get mad and stare angrily at each other, or off into the distance with a dramatically clenched jaw, depending on their specific social status within that particular square cross-crossed-applesauced dudes.

BUT…

The big fight at the end is definitely worth the price of admission.

Even though this particular historical battle apparently relied very heavily upon gigantic sailing ships repeatedly sneaking up on each other in open water in very dramatic fashion, it’s still pretty bad-ass.

The Turtle Ships especially are pretty awesome, these gargantuan beasts mostly ram into enemy ships, breach their hull, and then fire their cannons inside the enemy ship, causing massive damage, so they do have to get pretty close, but I mean… would it kill someone on the opposing crew to maybe look to the left, or to the right, just one time during the battle, because it certainly killed them to not do that.

Anyway, Hansen: Rising Dragons is not a great movie, but it’s still a pretty fun one, if also a somewhat bombastic one. It has some great costumes and some fun fights, and those Geobukseon are absolutely fantastic looking.

It’s worth checking out on a lazy day.