South Korean filmmaking in the modern era owes a great debt to Bong Joon-ho, who has struck international fame through The Host, Memories of Murder and, above all, icy post-apocalyptic thriller Snowpiercer. He’ll return at some point in 2017 with Okja, a sci-fi monster movie with an all-star cast to match.
Another South Korean director that has made a breakthrough on these shores is Kim Jee-woon, who offered the inimitable Arnold Schwarzenegger a route back to the movie scene some years ago with The Last Stand. He’s back behind the lens again, this time for a 1920s-set thriller called The Age of Shadows.
Above, you’ll find the movie’s inaugural trailer – replete with English subtitles – revealing a tense cat-and-mouse thriller spanning from Shanghai to Seoul, South Korea’s capital. Kang-ho Song, Yoo Gong and Ji-min Han are among the cast list.
Set in the late 1920s, The Age of Shadows follows the cat-and-mouse game that unfolds between a group of resistance fighters led by Gong’s character, trying to bring in explosives from Shanghai to destroy key Japanese facilities in Seoul, and Japanese agents trying to stop them. Song plays a talented Korean-born Japanese police officer who was previously in the independence movement himself and is thrown into a dilemma between the demands of his reality and the instinct to support a greater cause.
The Age of Shadows is yet to pin down an international release date beyond South Korea – it’ll make its native bow in September – but there has been chatter that Kim Jee-woon’s period flick could appear either at the Toronto Film Festival, or one of the other festivals lining the fall circuit.
