Read the Empire review of Frantz. Find out everything you need to know about the film from the worlds biggest movie destination. The Tomatometer rating based on the published opinions of hundreds of film and television critics is a trusted measurement of movie and TV programming quality. What seems a perfect union between Blake Lively and Jason Clarke hits a rocky patch when her sight is restored after years of blindness in Marc Forsters. Battleship Island is that rare war movie thats as thoughtful as it is bold. Entertainment News Los Angeles Times. Josh Rottenberg, Mark Olsen and Glenn Whipp. Harvey Weinstein, the brash outsider from Queens who upended Hollywood, has always liked to think of himself as an underdog. So there may have been no prouder moment for him than the night of March 2. Academy Awards accepting the best picture Oscar for Shakespeare. The Battleship Island Movie Review 2. Korean WWII prison drama The Battleship Island brings to mind a quote from comics artist Howard Chaykin. Chaykin, the writer and artist of formative science fiction satire American Flagg, admitted that he could never write a story about a psychologically uncomplicated character like Superman or Batman since he did not feel that these characters were true to his life experiences. For Chaykin, flawed protagonists in his case, often loudmouthed andor self righteous fascists for freedom were more real because he considered himself to be similarly flawed. Advertisement. That kind of cynicism as humanism is what makes The Battleship Island so exciting. Granted, co writerdirector Seung wan Ryoo clearly drew inspiration for his story of a group of Korean prisoners of war from such Steven Spielberg staples as Saving Private Ryan and Schindlers List. But the most ingratiatingand sometimes frustratingaspect of The Battleship Island is Ryoos championing characters whose suffering is quantifiable, whose survival instincts are materially observable, and whose sense of altruism and community stem primarily from necessity and dire peril. The heroes of this film are, in other words, selfish, but never in a venal, or ugly way. Theyre human, and they do what they must to face each successive challenge theyre confronted with. The Battleship Island is set in a Japanese internment camp on Hashima Island just before the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Most of the films diffuse ensemble drama concerns former band leader Gang ok The Wailing star Jung min Hwang, and his pre teen daughter Sohee Train to Busan lead Su an Kim. But occasionally, the drama splits off from Gang ok and his daughter, and focuses on secondary characters in order to further contextualize the nightmare that Gang ok and Sohee find themselves in. Women of all ages are herded into comfort houses where they are prostituted for Japanese officials pregnancy and venereal diseases are treated as inconveniences that bring dishonor on the island. Men are typically forced to work in coal mines where they must navigate claustrophobic, and highly combustible make shift tunnels. Everybody works, and nobody is exempt from the anger of Japanese wardensguards, not even the Korean collaborators who serve as middle men between Japanese soldiers and Korean prisoners. Hd Video Download Thor`S Hammer more. Circumstantial peril humanizes Gang ok to some extent, but hes always portrayed as a comically desperate fixer. You spend much of the films first hour wondering why he is the films main character. He tries to save himself and his bandmates from going to Hashima by arranging for a bribe, but that ploy backfires quickly in a heart breaking early scene where Gang ok realizes that almost everybody is trying to bribe their way out of trouble. He sweats, and bends over backwards when he thinks hes currying favor with the Japanese. The most noble thing that Gang ok does is create an elaborate bartering network whose primary beneficiary is, well, him. Advertisement. Seriously, why this guy, and not Hak chul Yoon Kyoung young Lee, a political prisoner who is believed to be the Korean resistances only hope of defeating the Japanese Gang oks story dovetails with Yoon and his disciples attempt at escaping Hashima Island. But Battleship Island is ultimately Gang oks story because we can observe just how good he is while Yoon only rallies people around him using demagogue like speeches. Ryoos film is, in that sense, more of a reaction to than a straight up rehash of Spielbergs war dramas. Characters are routinely reduced to their human needs, whether its using the bathroom, or finding ways to feed themselves. They lick dynamite sticks for extra food, and praise the emperor in order to curry favor with their jailers. They are not heroes, just survivors. In this context, sensational displays of violence and cruelty are understandably the norm, though that doesnt make them any more palatable. Ryoos emphasis on beatings, explosions, and prostitution will test viewers taste for his films thoughtful, but sometimes viscerally upsetting worldview. On a basic level, Battleship Island, as war movie, is most striking for its tendency of defining the human experience through suffering and endurance. Which is striking on an intellectual level, but another thing entirely when youre watching extras get mowed down in visually striking, exceptionally well choreographed set pieces. The films big D Day style prison yard escape climaxes with a death so gratuitously violent that it left this gorehound feeling a little uncomfortable. That having been said, while Battleship Island is sometimes unpleasant to watch, it is a consistently involving, atypically thoughtful crowd pleaser. Just look at the way that Ryoo uses music as a critical expression of nationalistic resistance. Gang ok and his band play Japanese military anthems to flatter their captors. But their real calling is playing jazz music. This might lead you to think that the film will climax with an explosive set piece scored by a jazz standard. Instead, Battleship Island climaxes with the above mentioned prison yard free for fall, scored by The Ecstasy of Gold, perhaps the second most famous piece of music composed by Ennio Morricone. Its a brazen callback that pushes the boundaries of good taste and intellectual credulity. But it makes perfect emotional sense. Battleship Island is that rare war movie thats as thoughtful as it is bold.