The Fortress

A superb historical epic from South Korea, once again dominated by Byeong-heon Lee's incredibly emotive performance. The huge budget is damn evident, the impressive cinematography, the great locations, the costumes, the sets, the elaborate visuals, well, it's really beautiful to watch. The film focuses more on politics, which I surprisingly really enjoyed as interesting topics are addressed, certainly no one had it easy in the 17th Century, and I was amazed how often they voted to execute some of their colleagues. Of course there's action and it is absolutely spectacular, brutal and uncompromising (the butchering, and subsequent cooking of horses is probably one of the most brutal scenes I've seen this year), and the finale absolutely blew me away. I was also intrigued by the character of the blacksmith and I think he definitely deserved more space. Too bad the last twenty minutes were slower, otherwise it would have been 5 stars. A solid work featuring some history, some politics and some spectacular action. 80% (03/09/2018)