Kim Jee-woon (director)
Warner Bros. Korea (studio)
15 (certificate)
141 (length)
24 March 2017 (released)
21 March 2017
The Age of Shadows sees director Kim Jee-Woon return to the filmmaking world of his native South Korea, following his excursion to Hollywood for the 2013 Arnold Shwarzenegger vehicle The Last Stand. And it’s fair to say Jee-Woon couldn’t have chosen more symbolic or totemic subject material for his cinematic homecoming.
Set during the 1930s, with its focus on the Korean resistance movement’s challenge to Japanese colonial rule, the film plays out as a South Korean creation myth, presented in the style of an archetypal 21st century, guns and gore Korean thriller.
This is quite a bold, artistic feat to pull off, and although it could be said that by choosing such an approach Jee-Woon was making some self-reflexive point about Korean identity, I think it is more likely that this is simply how the director knows how to make films, and he would employ this style whether he was directing a police procedural or a family drama.
Fans of the genre will greatly appreciate the visuals, the tension and the furious pace, especially in the final act; but the fact that it was so stylised I found to be quite tonally jarring at times, given the context of the historical setting. When the film did try to change pace and reach for a mood outside of its familiar palette of paranoia and jeopardy, it struggled to find a different range.
The performances were good, Song Kang-ho, in particular, carries the film well as the Korean police captain embedded deep within the colonial establishment, and potentially playing both sides off against each other. Gong Yoo and Han Ji-min provide strong assistance playing members of the resistance, although I didn’t find the intelligence officer Tae-goo Eom as menacing as the film clearly wanted him to be. In summary, an exciting historical piece but this story would have definitely benefitted from a little more nuance and understatement at times.