In 2014, a film called “The Admiral: Roaring Currents” was released to be the first of a long trilogy by writer and director Kim Han-min. Eight years later, we finally got the second film of the series with “Hansan: Rising Dragon” a film that made my top 10 best films of 2022.

Based on the career of Admiral Yi Sun-sin, the film focused on the Battle of Hansan Island in which You proved himself and made his reputation. Finally have the conclusion of this series, Noryang: Deadly Sea. The film takes place during the last leg of Japan’s invasion of Korea back in 1598 following the death of the Japanese warlord who calls for the removal of Japanese forces from the region.

Admiral Yi learns that the Japanese army trying to retreat and uses it as an opportunity to wipe out the remaining Japanese fleet before they can flee. Yi believes that wiping out the Japanese navy is the only way to stop them from coming back to Korea in the future as a result, Yi enters his final battle with the navy, creating a joint fleet with the Ming dynasty to block the retreat route and put an end to the Japanese forces.

This is the longest out of the three in the trilogy with a run time of 153 minutes. One of the things that works so well is the on Sea battle that were visually stunning. Deadly Sea spends the first two acts of his run time building up the cultivation of the story through the use of his strong visual effects, It’s amazing set and costume design, as well as the cinematography that really immerses the viewer into the late 1500s.

While the time and effort spent on the production values is certainly a plus this time around because of the extended run time. The film suffers for being over bloated and having a little too much fat on the bone.

You definitely begin to feel the 2.5 hour run time by the time you past the two hour mark, the biggest misstep of this film is the addition of the Ming dynasty, meaning that we have to be introduced to new characters that hadn’t been previous established in the first two movies.

This creative choice forces the main story to be put on pause for a significant amount of time. Simply put, this is an angle that should have been introduced in the previous installments rather than the third film. With that said, the film is a great window of the international politics between the three nations of Korea, China and Japan and how they stand today, including hand to hand combat as well as the fight on the seas that you certainly won’t be disappointed by you get here.

The biggest knock on Deadly Sea is that the film isn’t quite as polished as the first two movies. The decision to go longer likely hurt this film from being a bigger hit and ending on a bigger bang than they anticipated. However, with that said, this film is a war epic in every sense of the word and this is a film that gives you enough story, characters and visuals to be satisfied with the overall conclusion.

3.5/5

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