Assassination

A film set in Korea and Shanghai. The year is 1933. Korea is under Japanese occupation. There is a government in exile in Shanghai. An assassination is being planned. There are two targets: a Japanese commander and a Korean collaborator. A team of three is put together. An Ok-yun is a sniper. She is being held in a military prison and is taken out of it. Big Gun and Fast Guy are the other two. One a bomber, the other an explosives man. From there the film is a story of preparation. The team goes into Seoul. Papers, a house, weapons and a wedding. The target's son is marrying and the ceremony will be at a church. At the same time there is another line. Hawaii Pistol is a contract killer. He is given a job: to kill the team. The order comes from inside the government in exile. There is a betrayal. The narrative opens it early and the tension comes from there. An Ok-yun has a past too. She was separated from a family as a child and does not know she has a twin. That twin is the target's daughter. What the narrative is interested in is not resistance but sides: its idea is that the collaborators paid no price after the war, and the narrative says so directly in its last section. The action is crowded and leans on choreography. One section takes place in a hotel and is built almost as a single take. The period design is dense. The streets of Shanghai and Seoul were rebuilt. At the end the narrative jumps years. A court is convened and the collaborators are tried. The result is given as it was in history: no punishment. The film was among the most watched productions of its year in Korea. Choi Dong-hoon directed. Gianna Jun, Lee Jung-jae, Ha Jung-woo, Oh Dal-su and Cho Jin-woong are in the cast. Who it is for: anyone who likes Korean period action and productions with large casts. Who it is not for: anyone looking for simplicity; the plot is complicated, the characters many, and the first half hour is hard to follow.