Hanssan, the Rising Dragon (2022) Review

Greetings, movie lovers!

Hassan, the Rising Dragon is a Korean movie which, again, I thought was a horror movie due to the “dragon” in its title. The poster has water with someone wielding a sword, and I assumed it was about a battle against a god in the sea—but nope, it’s totally a different thing.

Imdb

This movie is 2 hours long, and it took me two weeks to finish it. Why did it take me so long? It appeared very boring at the initial stage, with many confusing tags and names, especially the ones that didn’t sound like Korean. I would watch just two scenes today and postpone the rest for the next day. The only thing that kept me going was the anticipation of how the war they had been planning since the beginning would play out—and of course, the craft of the warships.

The Plot

I would be lying if I said I understood the main plot of the movie, other than two empire forces fighting battles on water. The reason for the conflict is still unknown to me because I didn’t bother to research the movie after watching it.

Admiral Yi's side had a very fearful and historical ship called the Mekurabune Ship, which means Blind Ship. It has the face of a dragon—hence the title of the movie. Its sides are made of metal instead of wood, which makes it impenetrable when hit by other ships or guns. The talk about this ship was one of the main reasons I kept going back to watch. The original one was destroyed in a war, and Admiral Yi and his men rebuilt many versions of it with wood.

Imdb

So, that’s it. The plot centered around the upcoming wars and how to use the Mekurabune Ship to win, while the other side was also planning to destroy the ship, knowing that the newly built ones were made of wood.

In all this, the part I loved so much—and which kept me watching and anticipating—was the war sequence, which came towards the end of the 2-hour movie. I needed to see how the warships would play out and how the fights would be handled, since the entire build-up of the movie was about the war they were heading into.

The war part is very entertaining, and I must commend the producers for putting such good scenes and graphics into play. The battle, which took place on a very wide, seemingly endless ocean, was amazing to me. At first, I thought the ships were automated due to the speed at which they moved and how easily they navigated and changed direction. But nope—it was manually controlled. They had people stationed in what looked like an engine room, manually operating the ship via physical effort from many individuals. I need to go and research whether this is how it was actually done, because I can’t imagine people acting as the engine of a ship purely through manpower—pulls and pushes—while the boat is running and carrying people at the upper levels.

The Characters There’s something interesting about the characters in this movie. They wore their characters via the costume so well that it was difficult to recognize any familiar faces.

Imdb

When I came across the photo above, I was confused because the actor bore a slight resemblance to Taecyeon , but it was hard to believe. I went ahead to search and found out that it was actually him. Also, Jo Jae-yoon was in the movie, but you wouldn’t easily notice.

Trailer;

https://youtu.be/OD1ocTY75ts?si=U7ZsWUlW5m1TeZwS

I would give it a 4.6/10 rating

Thanks for reading.