The Battleship Island (2017)

For a long time, I’ve had this movie The Battleship Island—a Korea-Japan mixed war movie—on my list to watch, but I haven’t had the time to do so until yesterday. Mehn, this movie should be rated among the greatest movies in terms of its realistic nature. Hey, I don’t mean the storyline, because it got me a bit confused with the many unaligned attachments. However, it’s very understandable since it’s based on a true-life story. The realistic nature I’m talking about is the setting. I don’t know if I were an actor, I would agree to feature in such a movie, especially in those underground mining areas. Those scenes are so real, and even if they were done on a green background, I still wouldn’t believe it. The workers are very exposed to the dangers of gas and fire; they work without clothes, with their bodies littered in gas—such that with any little spark of fire, they’re gone. The hunger and survival realm are damn so real that one could almost feel it from the screen.

During the war between the U.S. and Japan, the Korean people, including children, were enslaved to work in a coal mine called Hashima. The women were not forced to work; they were used for chores and “comfort” (rape). The Japanese lords had no mercy for the Koreans—their lives did not count—to the extent that when a section of the mine caught fire, they closed up that mine with the workers still inside, just to prevent the fire from spreading.

They(the Koreans) later planned a plot to escape the island even though it looked almost impossible, and that was when the heartbreaking war broke out. The war was brutal, and the scenes were so real and unimaginable.

Aside from the writer and the directing crew, the actors and actresses did excellently well. For them to appear in such gory scenes and make every bit of the action so real deserves an applaud. The movie locations, especially Hashima Island, are a perfect fit for the story, particularly because it tells of an exact occurrence from the past. I didn’t go and do research, but if the large water body used in the movie is real, then they must have taken a big risk for that—and that’s what really makes a movie feel so real.

Maybe I’m the only one who got lost in the storyline at one point. I would have rated this movie an 8/10 if not for how the storyline isn’t straightforward; hence, I’m giving it a 6/10.

Thanks for reading.

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