A new Korean movie opened this week at my local theater and, of course, that meant I had to go support it. So, what did I think of the 2.5-hour film regaling the events of the Battle of Ansi? Come find out as I share my thoughts on The Great Battle.
TRAILER:
SYNOPSIS:
The Great Battle is a historical film about the siege of the Ansi Fortress and the epic eighty-eight-day battle that Yang Man-Chun and his Goguryeo troops fought against 500,000 invading Tang dynasty men to defend it (IMDb)
THE PLOT
The plot of the movie is probably the best thing it has going for it. The story is fascinating and since there is not a ton of historical documentation, the director/writer was able to get very creative with their battle maneuvers. I really enjoyed seeing all the ways that the military leader Yang Man-Chun (Jo In Sung) defeated the Chinese advances. Not that I think that even half of it is accurate, but it did make for an entertaining plot.
The problem comes when the director decides that everything needs to be, well, more. More action, more giant burning structures, more buggy eyed intense moments about characters that you don’t care about. Or actors that can’t portray the intensity that the director wants, which just increases the over the top buggy eye moments. It was a lot of everything, which, in my opinion, took away from the beauty of the plot.
I understand that a person is dying without them stumbling into camp with 30 arrows sticking out of their back like a porcupine. The absurdity of the visual takes away from a moment that should be emotional and profound. This occurred with almost every death scene. It is hard to take a touching goodbye moment seriously when blood is spurting out of a vein at the same time. Not joking, it was spurting in time with the music.
Cinematic Score
Talking about music, this is something that I have to comment upon. Just like the excessive use of pressurized blood spurts, this was OVER THE TOP. For two and a half hours all you hear is loud violins and drums. SO MANY DRUMS. Don’t get me wrong. I like a dramatic score as much as the next moviegoer. However, it was nonstop. And it wasn’t like it was slowly building drums to build to a crescendo. It got to the maximum drum allotment and stayed there. There was no subtlety to the music and I felt that the director was trying to make me feel that every second was super important. But all it did was just makes the important parts not stand out in the way they should.
CINEMATOGRAPHY
This is also a mixed bag of good and meh. On the one hand, I really enjoyed a lot of this director’s sweeping visuals of the battle. While I was very aware that it was all CGI and the crowds weren’t real, it still got across the grandness of the battle. I thought many of the closeup shots of the characters (well, half the characters, but I will discuss that later) were really beautiful. But then the action starts and it just goes to crap.
I do not enjoy the style of filming where they stop, pause, then fast forward (jerkily) the action. I find it distracting and unnecessary. This director uses this technique ad nauseam. Add in the fact that he likes to get “creative” with his camera angles and I had a slight headache by the end. I don’t think that anyone needs to see the world as seen by the arrow stuck in an eye socket. Yet another example of something distracting me from the moment. Also, there is never a time when the camera should jerk up and down in time with the sound of hoof beats. I can see the Calvary, I can hear the hoof beats. I don’t need to pretend that the ground is shaking to get the feeling this is meant to portray.
CHARACTER OBSERVATIONS
At this point, I guess you won’t be surprised that this is also a polarizing topic. So let’s begin with the bad and finish with the positive. Joo-Hyuk Nam & Eun-Chae Jung’s performances made me want to bonk my head on the nearest pole and cause amnesia. They were so poorly filmed. I halfway blame this on the director since it was obvious that he didn’t know what to do with their characters other than saying “be angsty and intense”. They both are not actor’s that can do, what I coin as, eye acting. So while the moments call for micro expression we instead are left with open mouths and buggy eyes.
But while they totally sucked and I wished they were both early causalities of the battle, there were many other actors/actresses that excelled in their performance. I was very surprised at how well Kim Seol Hyun did. She tends to also be an actress that I find meh, but I was impressed with her performance as Baek Ha. I also loved her love interest Uhm Tae Goo. The glimpse into their romance was one of the highlights.
The thing that saved the movie was 100% Jo In Sung’s performance. He has eye-acting in spades and I was totally convinced of his military tactician prowess and his love for his people. Jo In Sung commanded everyone’s focus anytime he was on screen and I was reminded how much I enjoy him as an actor.
OVERALL REACTION
After leaving the movie theater I was slightly annoyed at the over the top directing style and the drum-heavy OST. However, after having a few days to contemplate the film as a whole I am glad I went. It was worth suffering the negatives to watch In Sung Jo’s performance and some great battle strategy scenes. So I give this movie a solid 6.5. Worth watching once but not worth buying when it comes out on DVD.
Til our next movie adventure,
The Fangirls
Dramas with a Side of Kimchi
OMG…your “eye acting” strikes a chord! This reminds me of what I call the “doll face”…when an actor apparently thinks the best way to show layers/death/inner turmoil is to completely drain your face of natural movement. It used to just be an answer to the lack of actual acting skills but I see it enough to think it must be more cultural.
That said, it can be done well if you can actually act (see SJS in Terius). No excuse for LDW in Life…he knows better! Sorry for the mini rant!
Whoa. This thing sounds PAINFUL — in the non-romantic way.
I feel bad for NJH. I mean, this comes right after ‘Habaek’…….
Thank God that Jo In Sung is Jo In Sung! (He fought damn hard in and for this film 🤣)
Guess I’ll wait for it to come out on cable or something 😅
I’m crying from laughing so hard at your descriptions! Is it wrong that I now kind of want to see this film just to see how bad it is?! It’s like a Korean “Sharknado”!
Not as bad as sharknado. Lol. The really are some good parts. Just the bad stuff was glaringly obvious.
I also was super excited to see this when I found out it came to a local theater the same weekend I was taking my niece out for her birthday and since I have successfully converted her to watch both kdramas and cdrams (she will only watch the historical ones) this was a no brainer to see together. We actually both liked it and I was just so happy to be able to see Jo In Sung on the BIG screen rather than my itty bitty drama watching screen and found his performance amazing. We actually kept on comparing it to the Battle of Helms Deep from LOTR and found the two antagonistic characters very similar to Legolas and Gimli so had lots of laughs from that alone. Was happy to see it and support it so hopefully our local theater will continue to bring in more Korean movies. It was also so cute to sit right next to an elderly Korean couple where the wife would alternate between crying and then cheering when the Chinese would get there comeuppance. For me it was so much better than most of the Hollywood trash currently in the theaters so would have seen it for that fact alone.