The Age of Shadows (2016)
Directed by Kim Jee-woon
Set in the late 1920s, The Age of Shadows follows the cat-and-mouse game that unfolds between a group of resistance fighters trying to bring in explosives from Shanghai to destroy key Japanese facilities in Seoul, and Japanese agents trying to stop them.
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Set in the tumultuous time during the Japanese occupation of Twenties Korea, the opening scene involving an epic gun battle sets up interplay of the cat and mouse, and the mouse disguised as a cat – finely played by lead Song Kang-ho (Memories of Murder) as ambitious and morally hazy Captain Lee Jung-chool.
It starts with an ending: in 1920s Japanese-occupied Seoul, a showdown occurs between a hunted man, Korean resistance fighter Kim Jan-ok (Park Hee-soon) and his pursuer Captain Lee Jung-chool, played by Song Kang-ho, now iconically recognisable from (deep breath) Bong Joon-ho‘s “Snowpiercer,” “The Host,” and “Memories of Murder,” Park Chan-wook‘s “Thirst,” “Sympathy for Mr Vengeance” and “Joint Security Area,” and Kim Jee-woon’s own “The Good, The Bad, The Weird.” (It’s a resume that serves to remind us that God, we love this golden age of Korean genre cinema, and that ‘Age of Shadows,’ for his excellent performance as well as for many other reasons, sits easily in this pantheon).
Leading the charge is Captain Lee Jung-chool (“Memories of Murder” star Song Kang-ho, a master of morally ambiguous characters), a Korean-born officer who’s betrayed his homeland in exchange for a cushy position with the invading forces.
It starts with an ending: in 1920s Japanese-occupied Seoul, a showdown occurs between a hunted man, Korean resistance fighter Kim Jan-ok (Park Hee-soon) and his pursuer Captain Lee Jung-chool, played by Song Kang-ho, now iconically recognisable from (deep breath) Bong Joon-ho‘s “Snowpiercer,” “The Host,” and “Memories of Murder,” Park Chan-wook‘s “Thirst,” “Sympathy for Mr Vengeance” and “Joint Security Area,” and Kim Jee-woon’s own “The Good, The Bad, The Weird.” (It’s a resume that serves to remind us that God, we love this golden age of Korean genre cinema, and that ‘Age of Shadows,’ for his excellent performance as well as for many other reasons, sits easily in this pantheon).
Kim Jee-woon’s espionage drama opens with a thrilling rooftop chase, as Japanese police working under Captain Lee Jung-chool (Snowpiercer’s Song Kang-ho) hunt down a Korean resistance fighter named Kim Jan-ok (Park Hee-soon).
As Lee, Song Kang-ho (“Snowpiercer”) mines the internal discord as much as the script allows while struggling over his allegiances, whereas Um Tae-goo is a snarly Hashimoto.
Those in the attractive cast are all top-notch, though naturally the lion’s share of praise goes to Song (“Snowpiercer”) and Gong (“Train to Busan”) – the former for his delicate balance of loyalties as he realizes he’s being played, and the latter for his easy charm wrapped around determination.
The star of “ Thirst ” and “ Snowpiercer ” is typically fantastic, a man conflicted enough to question the role he’ll play in a formative chapter of his country’s history.
Played by the great Song Kang-ho (“Snowpiercer”), he could be a traitor, patriotic mole or opportunist.
Each one of these sequences is delivered like the climax to a Brian de Palma movie (indeed there’s a shootout in a train station that seems to deliberately echo “The Untouchables“) but there’s also such knotty spy-jinks intrigue going on that at other times it plays like “Betrayal on the Orient Express.”
Which is a shame, considering how the intrigue-filled premise probably allows for something more sophisticated to come out at the end à la Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, instead of just a properly climatic blow-off as Tarantino would have done it.
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An impressive range of expertly-staged set-pieces and lavish period recreations/costume designs will help, though, as will the appearance of Song Kang-ho (The Host, Snowpiercer) in the lead role, and of course Kim Jee-woon’s reputation goes before him (I Saw The Devil).
Armed with compelling characters, this punishing and gorgeous big-box Warner Bros. picture – its first go in the Korean market saw it dominating the box office – features I Saw the Devil director Kim Jee-woon rumbling down exceedingly long, winding roads, eventually reaching other truths along the way.
But he’s probably best known for “ I Saw the Devil ,” a memorably grisly serial-killer flick.
Most well known for another actioner (2010’s “I Saw the Devil”), the talented Seoul native is in fine form here, wringing every ounce of tension out of his glorious set pieces.
“The Age of Shadows” may not be among its filmmaker’s best works (I adore “Good,” “A Tale of Two Sisters,” and the vicious “I Saw the Devil”) but it’s not for lack of ambition or scope.
Kim (I Saw the Devil; The Good, The Bad, and the Weird) makes you care about selfish police chief Jung-chool's (Song Kang-ho) conversion into a bomb-slinging dissident by emphasizing circumstantial peril over psychological realism.