I Would Like to See It: Roaring Currents

And so the month’s dive into recent Korean film concludes with Roaring Currents, or The Admiral, Kim Han-Min’s historical epic about the Battle of Myeongnyang in which disgraced and ailing Korean admiral Yi Sun-sin (Choi Min-sik) faces seemingly insurmountable odds, his fleet of just twelve ships and their shaken, hesitant crews the last line of defense between Seoul and a Japanese armada of over three hundred warships. The film is fairly standard fare, hampered by jerky, sentimental slow-motion, shoddy CGI, and some shopworn dialog about fear and courage, but Kim’s efficient action pacing and focus on the human machinery of 16th-century naval battle, as well as Choi’s wearily stoic performance, keep it clipping along at a watchable pace. The action is bracing, the shipboard shots are packed with gorgeous period detail, and Ryu Seung-ryong is good fun as the villainous Japanese pirate-turned-admiral Kurushima Michifusa, a rival underdog to Sun-sin whose own personal vendettas and tensions with his more courtly superiors heighten the film’s stakes neatly.

Admiral’s special effects failures are, however, significant. Overhead at-sea shots often resemble something out of a mid-2000s Age of Empires game, ships flat and untextured, wakes interacting in bizarre fashion with the currents of the actual ocean. It’s distracting, and it disrupts the film’s flow as much or more than the far too frequent bouts of slow-motion. Admiral is infinitely more satisfying when it moves quickly, as in the majority of its brutal shipboard combat scenes and during its bombardment sequences. There’s a particularly pulse-elevating scene during which a matchlock sniper and cannoneer face off across open water, each cut back and forth timed to the hissing of rope fuses and the thunderous boom of cannon fire. It’s solid, exciting filmmaking, enough to make you wish Kim wasn’t held back by technical limitations.

When he’s able to use environmental obfuscation to his advantage, these shortfalls lose their edge. The scene in which Sun-sin’s flagship blasts its way out of a deadlock with four Japanese atakebune is wreathed in enough smoke that the blast looks halfway convincing, the gratifying kinetic shock of the explosive salvo real enough to make teeth clench and muscles tighten. Then there are moments like the semi-mythic reappearance of the burned turtle ship in the path of the retreating Japanese navy, rendered entirely in CGI and so patently fake it’s like ending the movie with a long, wet raspberry. Admiral is a mixed bag, but while it takes itself deadly seriously and does little that hasn’t been done before, its chaotic, ruthless naval battles and enjoyable lead performances sell the whole thing anyway.