Hansan: Rising Dragon - Blu-ray Review

[Michael Scott]

Hansan: Rising Dragon



Movie:
Video:
Audio:
Extras:
Final Score:


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Movie
Hansan: Rising Dragon is one of those real life epic stories about a real life historical battle, with real life characters and backstory, that seem to dot the Asian cinematic world. It’s also one of those movies that REALLY needs a lot of back story to truly grasp all of the nuances of the story, and is basically something that really is aimed towards a South Korean audience who are familiar with the historical battle. That’s not to say that it isn’t an enjoyable film, but needless to say, I spent the first hour plus trying to decipher who was who, what were the character motivations for certain machinations, and constantly going online to look up the tome of knowledge in order to figure out some of the nuances. However, it certainly does payoff in the end, with a culmination of political machinations playing out as a 45 minute long naval battle that is simply awesome to behold.

Supposedly this is a sort of prequel to another Korean film called The Admiral: Roaring Currents (which I now want to see, as it’s supposedly really good) and uses the real life admirals and warlords during the Japanese attempt to invade Korea back during their years of conquest. The film opens up with a battle between the Japanese and the Korean naval forces, with the Japanese nearly winning the battle, only for the Korean forces to bring out a mysterious ship that is not only able to withstand the onslaught, but ram and destroy the flagship of the Japanese forces.

Fast forward a bit and we’re introduced to the military leaders of both forces. The Japanese are trying to figure out just how many ships the Koreans have, and what happened to that mysterious “turtle” ship that demolished their ships. The Japanese military chief (Sang-Kyung Han) is intent on crushing the Koreans, but to do so he needs to amass a fleet that they can’t possibly destroy. Simultaneously Yi Sun-Shin (Park Hai-il) has his work cut out for him. The Japanese are stronger, superior numbers, and have a naval fleet that is unparalleled. This means pulling out all the stops in creating a battle plan that can allow the Korean forces to lure in and destroy the over confident Japanese and stop their assault on the Korean home land once and for all.

Hansan: Rising Dragon is a good film, but one that is hampered by too much density in the first hour (ish). I’m usually very good at keeping up with foreign language films, even fairly dense ones, but this took a lot of work and a lot of internet research to figure out just who was who. It doesn’t help that the Japanese forces were played by Koreans too, so it took a little bit for my brain to differentiate the two opposing teams outside of uniforms. The film is just DENSE with story pieces and back story that is told in snippets of text on the screen, only to move on to the over arching plan of the naval battle. It helped a good bit when I was able to get a synopsis of the players involved in the story online, but going in without any information is going to be tough, as this is the perfect example of movie where you need to be aware of the cultural history to really get a good chunk of it.

That being said, the film culminates in an incredible naval battle between Yi-Sun-Shin and the Japanese forces, with plenty of double backs, traps, and military strategy that makes for a good battle. Some of the CGI work with the overhead shots is a bit cheap looking (they don’t exactly have a Marvel budget), but the end find is simply enthralling with some awesome scenes of ship on ship combat. It’s not a perfect movie, but it most certainly is a fun movie as long as you can navigate the first act or two and figure out who is who early on.




Rating:

Not Rated by the MPAA




Video:

Supposedly shot on RED and Arri Alexa cameras, Hansan: Rising Dragon looks superb on Blu-ray. The film is very natural looking, with wonderful colors for the various costume and set pieces, and great encoding on the disc itself. I’m used to seeing a lot of banding on Well Go USA Blu-ray releases, but this time the image is mostly clear of artifacts. I didn’t notice some black crush in the bowels of the ships, but overall this is a very crisp and clean look. The CGI can be a bit wonky as I mentioned in the synopsis section, but there’s plenty of fine details to go around as splinters fly from cannon ball strikes, or intimate clothing nuances as a shirt is torn. Overall this is an incredible looking disc that should please just about everyone.









Audio:

Now, the absolute highlight of the entire movie is the absolutely KILLER 5.1 DTS-HD MA mix (in both English and Korean, with the Korean one getting my nod). It’s an absolutely devastating mix that carries an enormous dynamic range with it. The dialog centric stuff in the first act is punctuated with MASSIVELY explosive action scenes that literally take you from a whisper to pant flapping, ear splitting, thunderous battle sequences that just flatten the listener back into their seats. While the range is fairly massive, it’s not unbalanced either. The action scenes are literally a tour de force, with impressive surround capabilities as bullets, cannonballs and various sounds of the sea swirl around the listening position, and the bass is nothing short of awe inspiring. It may not be an Atmos track, but this is about as perfect of an audio mix as you’re going to get with a “simple” 5.1 lossless track.












Extras:

• Staff Audio Commentary
• Character Highlights
• Secrets of Makeup
• Original trailer

Final Score: ​

Hansan: Rising Dragon turned out to be a lot better than I thought it would be as I struggled through the first half hour. It would have been nice to know the historical figures going into the viewing, but once you get the hang of things it turns into a massive big budget war movie that really pays off in the 2nd half. The Blu-ray showcases amazing video and demo worthy audio, and even some ACTUAL extras on the disc for once (outside of the typical previews for other films)> Definitely worth checking out if you’re into naval war battles and historical epics.


Technical Specifications:

Starring: Park Hae-il, Yo-Han Byun, Sung-Ki Ahn, Myoung Gong, Jo Jai-Yoon
Directed by: Han-min Kim
Written by: Han-min Kin, Hong-gi Yun
Aspect Ratio: 2.39:1 AVC
Audio: English: DTS-HD MA 5.1, Korean DTS-HD MA 5.1, Korean, English DD 2.0
Subtitles: English
Studio: Well Go USA
Rated: NR
Runtime: 130 minutes
Blu-Ray Release Date: November 15th, 2022

Recommendation: Fun Watch

 

[Michael Boeker]

I'll have to pick this up. I have The Admiral: Roaring Currents and it is excellent with a great audio track, too.

 

[Michael Scott]

I'll have to pick this up. I have The Admiral: Roaring Currents and it is excellent with a great audio track, too.

excellent, I immediately went and ordered that as soon as I was done watching Hansan and hoped it was as good