|
 t's
inevitable that the South Korean movie machine
would eventually get around to contributing to the
shaping-history time travel movie genre, this time
in the form of rookie writer/director Min
Joon-ki's "Heaven's Soldiers." As films
in the genre usually goes, contemporary characters
wind up somewhere in the past, where they happen
upon a critical juncture in history alongside one
or two significant figures of the time. The
protagonists soon discover that the truth doesn't
quite jibe with history, and are forced to lend a
hand in fulfilling that history. It's a
tried-and-true formula, and the best example might
be "Star
Trek: First Contact" (aka the third best
"Star Trek" movie, ever).
The
subject of revision in "Heaven's
Soldiers" is Lee Soon-shin, a name that holds
little meaning outside the Korean peninsula, but
is arguably the most well-known (if not most
respected) figure in Korean history. Lee was a
savvy tactician who beat back the Japanese
invaders at the end of the 16th century, employing
a perfect combination of skill and luck.
Presently, an obscenely large statue of the man
stands in
Seoul
, and his likeness appears on numerous
denominations of South Korean currency.
But
"Heaven's Soldiers" gets fanciful on us
even before the time hopping starts. According to
the movie, by 2005 the North and South Korean
governments have secretly joined forces to create
a nuclear warhead, and when the leaders of both
nations decide to hand over the nuke to the
American military, North Korean officer Kang
Min-gil (Kim Seung-woo) goes rogue and hides away
with the nuke along with nuclear physicist Kim
Su-yeon (Kong Hyu-jin, "Volcano
High"). It's up to South Korean Navy
Officer Park Jeong-wu (Hwang Jung-min, "A
Bittersweet Life") and a team of
commandos to retrieve the scientist and the
warhead, but during a heated firefight, the nuke,
the scientist, and both groups of soldiers are
swept up in the wake of a passing comet (don't
ask) and dumped into the late 1500s -- right in
the middle of a battle between Korean peasants and
marauding Chinese barbarians.
Not
surprisingly, the soldiers handily dispatch the
barbarians with their modern weaponry, and are
thus dubbed "Heaven's Soldiers" by the
startled onlookers. It's not long before the
unwitting time travelers run afoul of a brazen
thief who turns out to be no other than the
legendary Lee Soon-shin (Park Joong-hoon), looking
very un-legendary at the moment. To their horror,
the travelers discover that the real Lee is a
selfish, thieving layabout more concern with the
money in his purse than the future of his country.
It's up to hero
worshipper
Park
to mentor his personal hero onto the greater
things written about him in history. Meanwhile,
Kang and his men task themselves with retrieving
the warhead, as scientist Kim tries to figure out
how they're all going to get back home.
Being
that "Heaven's Soldiers" is very much a
Korean film, it is of course schizophrenic in
tone, swinging across great distances of broad
comedy and intense melodrama and back again. This
results in the filmmakers milking their admittedly
derivative concept for the full spectrum of
emotions. It's a good thing, too, since the
"everything but the kitchen sink"
approach of "Heaven's Soldiers" is what
makes it a unique and mostly entertaining movie in
the first place.
Even
before the time-travel element is introduced,
"Heaven's Soldiers" walks in the realm
of the fantastic with its suggestion that both
Koreas
would cooperate to develop a nuclear weapon in
secret. Keep in mind that just five years ago
"JSA"
stirred up a ridiculous amount of controversy when
it offered a story featuring fraternization
between enemy soldiers along the DMZ. Taking that
into consideration, time travel via near-earth
comet fly-by would seems almost mundane, at least
from a South Korean perspective.
"Heaven's Soldiers" indulges in the expected
fish-out-of-water gags when the soldiers first
arrive in the past, but there are also humorous
asides about life in the 16th century. But more
unique to the setting is director Min's sly dig at
the current state of affairs on the Korean
peninsula. In particular, the fact that the North
and South soldiers insist on maintaining their
separate nationalistic ways, leading to pointed
scenes where the characters create and enforce a
miniature DMZ-esque barrier in front of the
dilapidated forest hovel that serves as their base
of operations. In fact, it's the film's numerous
subtle jabs at modern life and politics that sets
"Heaven's Soldiers" apart from other
films with a similar premise.
Expectedly,
"Heaven's Soldiers" takes a decidedly
dark turn at roughly the halfway mark, embarking
on a detour to Melodramaramaland with gusto. The
plotline about the Chinese barbarians which had
been sitting at the peripheral edges finally comes
to the fore when the invaders embark on a blood
vendetta against our displaced heroes. The result
is a fairly jarring segue into a period war film
as Lee finds his strengths as an emerging leader
and our time-displaced soldiers set aside their
differences for the Cause (and that's definitely
deserving of a capital "C") while all
traces of comedy evaporates from the story.
Despite
its flaws, "Heaven's Soldiers" holds up
well as a whole. As in the case of the recent
"A Bittersweet Life," "Heaven's
Soldiers" writer/director Min Joon-ki is well
aware he's not reinventing the wheel, and as a
result plays with audience expectations at every
opportunity. It's probably no accident that the
time travelers land in the time of the revered Lee
Sun-shin, considering the political shakeups the
Korean
Peninsula
has undergone since the end of World War II. If
anything, "Heaven's Solders" serves as a
calling card to a simpler time, before
demilitarized zones and foreign influences split
the country. Ultimately, this is where
"Heaven's Soldiers" shines -- it starts
off as a routine time-travel story, only to finish
up as a nationalistic male-empowerment/brotherhood
movie. |
