dmuel
Hanbando is a Korean nationalist fantasy involving a search for the missing national Seal Of Korea, a Japanese conspiracy to renew its colonial control of Korea, and patriots and traitors battling over the destiny of the Korean nation. If this sounds nail-biting, believe me it ain't. At 147 minutes (2hrs. 27 min), it is overlong by at least 50%. There is a seemingly endless series of discussions over the plight of Korea which are agonizingly tedious to sit through. Several scenes which go back and forth from the present to Korea of the 19th Century are, of course, intended to show the still unresolved situation in Korea, with Japan as the still-threatening arch enemy. An underlying theme throughout the film is the supposed effort of the world's major powers, including the U.S., Japan, China and Russia to hold Korea back and to thwart Korean unification. For all this political content, this is an extremely boring film.
Tero Huttunen
Many of the Korean movies I've seen lately seem to take this same nationalistic stand where Japan is pictured as extremely evil, always pressuring, conquering and violating Korea. I don't know what the exact situation in South Korea is at the moment, but judging from these movies, nationalism seems to be pretty much in demand.As for the movie, mediocre would be my word of choice. Not bad, but nothing really worth watching for. The events have rather dragging pace, most of the actors are plausible, music suits the movie well and action looks good. The plot is weakest point of the movie, being unconvincing at best, it focuses on Korea digging up their Emperial history and rising to resist Japan after all the cruelty they have suffered from their behalf. Certainly not best that Korean movie industry has to offer.
dannyboy1026
Softening up is vilifying? When Myungsunghwanghu was killed, she had her breasts sliced off and Japanese soldiers raped her dead body. In this movie all the Japanese samurais did were stab her six times, which I admit is gory, but is less gruesome than the truth. Ask any Korean adult that remembers history class and they will likely repeat this. The reason the portrayal was softened up was to make it viewable for a somewhat larger audience.The movie has great acting, although I must admit there are some English typos and grammatical errors. (causion, disappear). The only real cheesy sounding actor is Cha Tae Hyun. The president is portrayed perfectly, and several of the turn-arounds (the President actually ordered himself to be incapacitated to see who was Chin-il-pa ish - in favor of the Japanese).I love this movie because the director seems to bring a totally possible (theoretically) situation to life. Excellent, excellent, excellent.
vatalian
(this comment might contain a bit of spoiler regarding the movie's overall atmosphere and content)First of all, the director's too busy glorifying Korea. Some history contents (eg. the death of Myungsunghwanghu) were modified to vilify Japan more than necessary, when the country is already being blamed for claiming ownership over Dokdo. Next thing I hated was the language. Actors talked in a really cheesy way; nobody in real life would talk like that. Then there are these Japanese politicians talking only in Korean, fluently. Korean actors took the Japanese politician parts, so I could understand. Not a lot of Japanese actors would participate in a movie that attacks Japan. Yet, the Japanese soldiers in the movie spoke in only in Japanese. This weird contradiction led to the movie's lack of reality. Plus, all the major events happened based on luck, or at the last minute: a classic cliché. I hate to disrespect Korean movies as I am Korean, but this movie isn't something I would praise since I am also a sane being with two working eyes.The jokes were terrible.The director did a better job in Silmido (way better).
AD
