The Pirates
Director: Lee Seok-hoon
Year: 2014
Rating: 7.0
Country:
Korea
A fun, silly rip-roaring Korean swashbuckling
adventure tale fueled on a child's imagination and a boatload of CGI. Indiana
Jones on ships and speed. You have everything a child would dream of - pirates,
sharks, whales, sword fights, impossible escapes, bandits, duels with only
a smidgeon of romance without a kiss. Not to mention pratfalls and funny
faces. If I was ten, I would love this film - as an adult I just really enjoyed
it for all the same reasons. It has a couple very big action set-pieces in
which CGI plays a big role, but in such a fun way that it added to it rather
than diminished from it. I mean in what world could you have a gigantic Ferris
Wheel that gets loose and rolls through the town causing massive destruction
- or harpooning a shark and speeding along like a motorboat. And then of
course there is the whale that would make Moby Dick tuck in its tail and
run. Or swim, I guess.
It is a period film taking place in the
1300s but there is no real effort to give it any authenticity - everyone
feels very contemporary in their attitudes and speech. Some history is thrown
in, but no idea how accurate it is. Not that it matters. We are here for
the pirates, bandits and soldiers chasing after a giant whale. And it is
no pirate king, but a pirate Queen. A lot of characters to keep track
of as the film swerves back and forth between them. It begins with Jang Sa-jung
(Kim Nam-gil) as a soldier in the army who deserts once he finds out that
the General plans to overthrow the King. He becomes a bandit with a scruffy
gang of men who won't be appearing in GC any time soon. A dentist could make
a fortune off of them. Then there is the military of the new government -
the coup was successful and they have chosen the name of Joseon - but a huge
whale wrecks the boat that is bringing the King's Seal from the Mings and
the whale swallows it.
Of course, most fun are the pirates - led
by the fierce So-ma (Lee Geung-young) who has as his number two Yeo-Wol (Son
Yi-jin) a young woman that he has brought up. But the Pirate King tries to
hand over some of his men to the government and she stops him and tosses
him overboard. He will be back as movie bad guys tend to do. All these different
threads come together as they all go after the whale. The government needs
the Seal to be legitimate and they fight each other as much as the whale.
But it is all fun - the pirates and bandits are amiable misfits and the soldiers
are incompetent. Plenty of fighting and swashbuckling. I didn't make the
connection till I checked afterwards, but Son Yi-jin was the main actress
in a few classic romances when I first started watching Korean films - Lover's
Concerto, The Classic and April Snow. This film was made ten years later
than those and she is now a Pirate Queen!
