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Age of Shadows is a spy/war period piece from South Korea told during the Japanese occupation. The film is the story of a police captain who upon killing a resistance fighter he once knew turns on the police and joins the resistance against the Japanese leaders. I suppose you could call this a cat and mouse game but every other character in the film other than Lee is sadly underwritten and fairly indistinguishable.
The movie is good though, it looks gorgeous and you can tell actual money was spent on a number of the sets, and the large cast. Though at times the cast was more of a hinderence several scenes you have this massive police/army force tracking down one fighter and it just felt really over the top. One scene in the film a hundred soldiers bear down on this cabin on one angle leaving the good guy an opportunity to escape.
The other issue with the film is that it peaks in the middle, you've got a fantastic train scene that builds on suspense and then subverts your expectations with an action scene right afterwards. Unfortunately that's undercut by an hour of story afterwards that just feels tacked on.
Not to say I dislike the film, I actually enjoyed it in bits and pieces but I felt the runtime and fount the uneven nature of it to be a pretty big knock. It's a pity because with better editing and self control this could have been my top pick from this Hall.
