Noryang: Deadly Sea

As a history lover, the movie was painful to watch from beginning to end. Sure, artists can take certain liberties while telling a story, but nothing in the movie was true to what actually happened. The order of battle of complete nonsense. The portrayal of factions completely one dimensional: the Japanese are all demonic and fanatical, the Chinese are cowardly and useless,. The Koreans are all heroic and invincible. If that was true, why did the war drag on for seven long years in the first place? How did they manage to lose almost all the land territory without Ming China's help? At any rate, a thoroughly disappointing movie. More of a caricature than anything else.

I am from Belgium and little ingorant to the history of Japan/China and Japan. I didn't even know which sides I was watching at the start of the movie. However that became clear when I kept watching. This is a movie about a massive sea battle that took place around 1600. The costumes, the ships and the acting is all very well done. The changing fortunes of battles kept me also engaged, however some tell its nog 100% historical accurate. I loved this movie, I hope you will too. There is not alot of movies that are purely about sea battles, this one if very well done. Even if alot of cgi was used, which you will see during the movie.

It is the third film about the admiral, again with a new cast. The first two films are about underdogs winning against invaders, but here, from the very beginning we know that the invaders just wanted to leave, and the admiral just wants something akin a genocide. And accidentally helps the bad(er?) guy, or at least that's what implied. The film should've explained why he should not let the japs go clearer. Because in plain text the beginning of the film is framed as the nihonese guy wanting to save a kid and the admiral wanting for more people to die in a war that is already over. Once again these movies do not work by themselves. You watch one and think, "well that's some hollywood fantasy". But then you read up and understand that the naval battles scenes were actually plausible and awesome. Nay if you hindsight about it - they are borderline inevitable. Why do you have to do a homework to watch a movie? After doing some superficial research for this filmi saw at least some possible reasons for these decisions, none of which are in the film. After a whole hour of meandering and weak drama, the awesome finally begins. Besides the two geobukseons, which soon are sank, they brought hwachas. There are some cool manoeuvres and in general most of the naval battle scenes are cool. There're a couple of awesome shots. There are scenes of people talking by writing hanzi which is cool. The whole region used hanzi but spoke different languages, so they could communicate through hieroglyphics but not by talking. Yet most of the drama scenes are actively not good and drag this down. The actors playing non-korean have very unconvincing hard accents, so much so the speech doesn't even resemble the nationalities in its cadence. The flashbacks are unfitting, and often very unnecessary. Like they show scenes which you saw five minutes ago. And then there's, like, flashbacks to the previous movies, i think, but i don't remember who these people are supposed to be, and they all are wearing military uniforms. The post credits scene talks about attacking nihon so that the war actually ends. But that the war did end. And right before the film has started. And the besieged dude even got what he wanted - he run away. Or is this a ressentiment, that not attacking nihon in 1600s then led to the later occupation of the peninsula by a different nihonese government in 1900s? That's petty. And no other interpretations are offered by the film, should've explain the situation better.

I believe there are inaccuracies in many Korean historical movies as they often portray events in a way that may not align with historical facts. This movie again proves my point because it is misleading and does not represent the actual history. It is essential to acknowledge that during the invasion, Korea was in a vulnerable position and relied on China for support. Japan most likely would defeat Korea without China's navy. While stating this, I understand that sharing these views might provoke adverse reactions from some individuals. However, it is crucial to realize that distorting historical events will not change the reality of the past. Besides the historical inaccuracy, this movie is slow and puts me to sleep. I was only awakened by the battle scene. I would not recommend this work to any historical movie lovers.