Attempting to bring up a real point in history, the central points surrounding Ryoo Seung-wan's action/adventure effort Gunhamdo, which was retitled to “The Battleship Island” for international release, are based in reality despite being mostly fictional.
“The Battleship Island” is screening at Florence Korean Film Festival 2020
During the Japanese takeover of Korea in WWII, a group of Korean prisoners, including famous gangster Choi Chil-sung, (So Ji-sub) grad student Oh Jang-woo, (Jang Sung-bum) escaped comfort woman Mal-nyon, (Lee Jung-hyun) and a nine-piece band led by Lee Gang-ok (Hwang Jung-min) that includes his pre-teen daughter So-hee (Kim Soo-ahn) are taken to the ruthless Nishima Island to work the coal mine inside as forced laborers. Tasked with working under the grueling conditions by Daisuke Shimazaki (Kim In-woo) and with no hope of an escape, they soon get word that Korean Liberation Army leader Yoon Hak-chul (Lee Kyoung-young) is among the miners and has sent OSS agent Park Moo-young (Song Joong-ki) in to extract him. Realizing their opportunity, the motley group of survivors band together with the other desperate souls onboard the camp to stage a drastic rescue mission to get him and themselves off the island.
For the most part, “The Battleship Island” comes off rather well. Among the most enjoyable aspects here is the massive sense of scale and grandeur attempted by director Seung-wan. This one attempts to put viewers straight into the confines of the situation present. Granted an immediate view of the hard-labor conditions present at the camp with everyone covered in dirt, sweat and grime that comes from the coal-mining environment, the hardships living there are quite prominent and obvious. When added together with the treatment afforded to them by the officials in charge from both the Japanese and sympathetic Koreans on their side, the film manages to get that life of theirs quite easily established. From that point, their individual personal stories in the battle can be told. Since there's a lot of people involved in the camp that need to get their stories told which manages to fill out the relationships of everyone involved, we get a full run-down and understanding that gives the necessary melodrama for the final battle.
With the characters established, “Battleship Island” has plenty of stellar high-energy action scenes. The various escape attempts that are featured to get an idea of how ruthless and commanding this regime has over the island set up the stellar finale. As a prison escape movie, it would be nothing without a massive, overreaching sequence, which is the case here as the finale goes overboard in the spectacle sense. The large-scale sets that manage to hold the entire cast involved in the sequences are massive and sprawling endeavors that bring forth impressive stunt-work and choreography that lets just about everyone have a chance for a hero moment in the large-scale sequences. It pushes the boundaries towards over-the-top sensationalism with the energetic fights carried out around the island as the struggle to carry out the complex plan starts to come to fruition.
While there's a lot to like, “Battleship Island” does have some rather striking issues. Among the most problematic is the overwrought storyline by Seung-wan that purposefully shoehorns too much into the narrative. With too many characters and backstory to set up and get-through, there's way too much going on to keep up with, as we go through the constant reminders that So-hee is in constant danger around the camp or getting the extravagant details of Moo-young's escape plan going on in the background of this one. This constant sense of melodrama created here that gets exploited in the finale, gets to be overwhelming rather than immersive, getting lost in a sea of sensationalistic action and jingoistic nature about the plight of Koreans needing to stand up to the Japanese imperialists. It all makes the film a touch too long to really get the full effect of what's intended, but overall these issues aren't that detrimental in the long run.
Managing to work as a fun, high-energy series of action set-pieces but full of overwrought melodrama and too much going on, “Battleship Island” is certainly a worthwhile spectacle experience overall.
