The Fortress

Hwang competently orchestrates the film's disparate political and strategic developments, but there's little sense of stylistic inspiration or narrative innovation - it's all pretty conventional.

... a film that will probably mean most to viewers from Korea, where it was made - though you don't need to know much about the historical background to gather roughly what the story is meant to suggest about the present.

"The Fortress" clocks in at 139 minutes, but feels much, much longer.

So evocative that by the end viewers may be as cold and hungry as the movie's cast of courtiers.

The Fortress, for all of its military trappings, is not an action movie. Viewers seeking a political drama mixed with a history lesson will find this much more to their taste.

That gloomy sentiment, beyond the plot, is also perfectly represented via cinematography and sound design, granting The Fortress the uniquely dark aesthetic of showing us history from the side of the losers.

The recreation of a historic moment in Korea's constantly embattled past becomes a rather enervating epic in the too diaogue-driven hands of director Hwang Dong-hyuk.

Without giving too much away, there's something for everyone here.