Han-Min Kim
L'impero e la Gloria - Roaring Currents

Empire and Glory - Roaring Currents is the tale of one of the most famous battles in Korean history, and above all, the story of one of the country's major national heroes, Admiral Yi, imprisoned due to betrayal, freed out of desperation after an almost total defeat of the fleet under his command, and capable of defeating the invading Japanese with only 12 ships against more than 300 enemy ships. A kind of Korean Leonidas, in short, a commander unafraid to face death and to continue fighting despite the overwhelming number of opponents. The film is divided into two parts, the preparation for the battle and the actual battle. The tone is epic and spectacular, heavily tilted in favor of the Korean side (as is common with many films of this genre, where the good-vs-evil dichotomy is starkly defined), with numerous rhetorical and propagandistic moments, fortunately well-concealed thanks to the great actor Min-Sik Choi (remember Old Boy?), whose looks and stage presence render the entire picture even more epic. Scenes of great impact are alternated with moments of calm, where the thoughts and doubts of the Admiral regarding the choices to be made prevail. Then the naval battle begins, and here the spectacle of the clash takes over everything. It's true that many clichés, which are often an integral part of war films and especially those of an oriental nature, quickly emerge, but the battle is extraordinary, both from a visual-choreographic standpoint, with excellent special effects and breathtaking shots, and from a rhetorical-emotional perspective, which, despite a couple of unbearably sentimental phases, holds up well, especially thanks again to the figure of Admiral Yi, who towers over everyone and everything, truly showing himself to be a hero worthy of the best Leonidas of 300. To conclude, we aren't talking about the new Apocalypse Now, far from it, rather a continuation of the epic of John Woo's Red Cliff, with an immensely shorter duration (making it more "digestible" for those who don't love this genre), but with similar spectacle and a similar care in also showing the strategic-choreographic side of the battle, and not just rivers of blood, which, indeed, for this type of film, are also quite moderate.