‘The Age of Shadows’, Between a patriot and an opportunist

One Line Review: Kim Jee-woon’s new film, “The Age of Shadows” is a clever piece of work, both inside and out.

Title: The Age of Shadows (밀정)

Director: Kim Jee-woon (김지운)

Starring: Song Kang-ho (송강호), Gong Yoo (공유), Han Jimin (한지민), Um Tae-goo (엄태구), Shin Sungrok (신성록), Heo Sungtae (허성태), Park Heesoon (박희순), Lee Byung Hun (이병헌)

Released in theaters: September 7th, 2016, South Korea

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4914580/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_4_nm_4_q_the%2520age%2520of%2520shadows

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_age_of_shadows

The Age of Shadows Review

On the surface, the movie is interesting. It could have been a heavy-handed, suspenseful film centered around the protagonist’s psychological transformation.

Instead, director Kim strips away the grit of the anti-Japanese and puts on an action outfit for the Korean’s struggle. The protagonist’s psychological transformation is powered by Song Kang-ho, one of South Korea’s top movie stars.

What the screenplay lacks in explanation, Song Kang-ho makes up for with his acting. To put it more bluntly, Song Kang-ho’s performance is so overwhelming.

It’s also fun to watch the sets, which make an effort to faithfully recreate the period. The train sequence where the group is scrambling to find the mole inside is tense and well-directed.

Cameos

Last but not least, the actors who made special appearances also made the movie. Park Heesoon as Kim Jang-ok and Lee Byung Hun as Jung Chae-san, the leader of Heroic Corps (의열단), which is an organization of activists like Resitance, both made their presence felt without being paid.

His unflinching performance as a key figure in the early action sequences, and Lee Byung Hun’s memorable turn as a night fisherman, despite the fact that most of his screen time is spent pouring drinks and drinking, make this movie a pleasure to watch.

Lee Jung-chul in the original version of The Age of Shadows

With that introduction to The Age of Shadows out of the way, let’s take a look at the character of Lee Jung-chul. Played by Song Kang-ho, Lee Jung-chul is an enigmatic character.

The Age of Shadows is based on the book “The People Who Shook Gyeongseong in 1923,” a book about the activities of Heroic Corps. This book depicts the real-life activities of Heroic Corps, and all the members of Heroic Corps appear in this book with their real names, whereas in The Age of Shadows they are all pseudonyms.

Lee’s real-life counterpart is a man named Hwang Ok. He actually helped Heroic Corps and was tried and sentenced by the Japanese for helping Heroic Corps.

That doesn’t mean that Korea recognized him as a patriot. Even in Korea, Hwang Ok is considered pro-Japanese, not a patriot.

Lee Jung-chul in the movie

The movie “The Age of Shadows” tries to show different sides of Lee Jung-chul by adapting Hwang Ok, who is only known as Lee Jung-chul, into Lee Jung-chul. The audience can’t help but empathize with Lee Jung-chul. Is he really a patriot? Or is he an emotional opportunist?

At the beginning

Lee Jung-chul is a former member of the Shanghai Provisional Government, but he defected and is now a lieutenant in the Governor General’s Department, tasked with finding independence fighters.

He is set to have ties to the rebels, including being friends with Kim Jang-ok (whose real name is Kim Sang-ok), who dies early in the movie.
He is a man who is favored by Kyung-shi and is guaranteed to rise in the ranks of the Japanese government as long as he performs as well as he has been. However, things change when a rival named Hashimoto (Um Tae-goo) enters the picture.

Rivalry

Hashimoto is also a renegade, but he is more ambitious than Lee. Through a mole in Heroic Corps, he has better information than Lee Jung-chul and begins to pressure him.

Higashi Kyoshi (Shingo Tsurumi) wants to pit them against each other so that he can achieve his goals quickly. With his position threatened, Lee becomes desperate.

He needs to push Hashimoto out of the way and monopolize the credit. In a brilliant twist of timing, Heroic Corps tries to win him over to their side.

They think that his memories of working for the Provisional Government and seeing his friend and fellow member Kim Jang-ok die in front of him will help them.

Lee Jeong-chul’s position is shaky, but he is eventually persuaded by the leader of the group.

In the end

He tries to put off helping out once and taking credit for it until another time, but things don’t go so well. Hashimoto’s information has leaked out, exposing the group’s operations and Lee Jung-chul’s relationship with them.

Lee is forced to work with Heroic Corps to eliminate Hashimoto’s group, but from this point on, Lee has no choice. He had no choice but to cooperate with the group because even if he could hide his collaboration with the group for a while, he couldn’t keep it a secret for the rest of his life, and he had developed a human connection to them through his activities with the group.

Is he a patriot?

At the end of the movie, Lee Jung-chul ends up being a member of Heroic Corps. Was he an independence fighter or a patriot? Was he an opportunist who changed the direction of his life depending on the situation?

In Korea, there must have been spies who deliberately approached the Japanese government to steal information from independence fighters. How many of them could be called patriots?

Obviously, we can’t tell from the records. There is no record of all the actions of the independence fighters, and those who held government positions during the Japanese occupation were classified as pro-Japanese by default.

How much credit should we give to those in the gray? This is an important historical question. If we start singling them out and recognizing them as patriots, it will make the task of cleansing South Korea of pro-Japanese elements even more difficult.

The descendants of the pro-Japanese who are now making a good living will surely come forward and say that their ancestors were gray people who cooperated with independence, but this is a discussion that will have to take place at some point.

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