Without question, the biggest Korean film of 2015 was Choi Dong-hoon’s
Assassination. It may have ended up at #2 in the year-end chart (behind Ryoo Seung-wan’s upstart
Veteran), but in terms of anticipation, scale, budget, star power and its outsized presence in the cultural conversation, it was an unrivalled production. Similar to
The Thieves, the director’s previous film,
Assassination combined overseas location shooting, major stars, humor, elaborate action sequences, and Choi’s signature witty dialogue into a sleek commercial package that was “too big to fail.”
Nonetheless in some ways this was a risky project for Choi to take on. In terms of its historical setting,
Assassination was bound to be viewed in a far more serious light than the heist film
The Thieves.
For years, Korean directors had tended to avoid the Japanese colonial period (1910-1945) during which time Korea was ruled and dominated by Japan. Contemporary Koreans think of this era as a particularly dark and humiliating chapter in their history, so films set in the 1920s or 1930s run the risk of being too dark and depressing, or too light (and therefore, in the opinion of some, not sufficiently expressing the injustice of Japanese rule).
For example
Blue Swallow, a 2005 film about Korea’s first female pilot, was the target of an online smear campaign arguing that the historical figure depicted in the film had collaborated with the Japanese colonial government.
In focusing on a group of independence fighters,
Assassination succeeded in entertaining its audience and avoiding online controversy. The film opens in 1911 at a fancy lunch meeting between the Governor-General (the Japanese political figure who ruled Korea) and a wealthy Korean businessman named Kang In-guk (Lee Gyeong-young). Suddenly, an independence fighter bursts in and makes an assassination attempt.
Twenty-two years later, in 1933, that same independence fighter (Lee Jung-jae) is asked by the Korean Provisional Government in Shanghai to recruit a team for a similarly ambitious assassination.
Ranging across China and Manchuria, he picks up a supremely talented sniper named Okyun (Gianna Jun Ji-hyun), a reluctant independence soldier nicknamed Big Gun (Cho Jin-woong), and an explosives expert named Duk-soo (Choi Duk-moon). As they receive their mission and start making plans for the operation, their paths cross that of a legendary hit man nicknamed Hawaii Pistol (Ha Jung-woo) and his right hand man (Oh Dal-soo).
One of Director Choi Dong-hoon’s often-cited strengths is his ability to create a diverse ensemble of interesting characters, and to keep the action moving by having these figures interact and collide with each other in unexpected ways. Even more so than the elaborate sets and bullet-riddled action setpieces, it’s this clash of personalities that makes
Assassination fun to watch.
As for its take on the colonial era, the film balances a sense of national tragedy and humiliation with personal stories that, even if they may not end in happily ever after, involve some degree of individual redemption. And although the film lacks a hard-edged realism in its re-creation of 1930s Korean society, it did provoke discussion about resistance to Japanese rule during this time period.
Among the long list of well-established stars who appear in this film, it is once again Gianna Jun who steals the show. The character of Okyun is short on words, but Jun manages to make her painful backstory convincing, and to convey her fierce determination to make someone pay for the atrocities committed in the name of imperialism. Even if she’d been the film’s only hero, Assassination would still have been worth watching.