Heaven's Soldiers

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Heaven's Soldiers
Directed by Min Joon-Ki
Written by Min Joon-Ki
Starring Park Joong-hoon
Kim Seung-woo
Hwang Jung-min
Kong Hyo-jin
Distributed by Showbox
Release date(s) July 15, 2005
Running time 106 min.
Country South Korea
Language Korean
IMDb profile
Korean name
Hangul 천군
Hanja 天軍
Revised Romanization Cheon-gun
McCune-Reischauer Ch'ŏn-gun

Heaven's Soldiers is a 2005 film from South Korea, directed by Min Joon Gi. It is an action and humorous movie shifting back and forth between high tension and comedy, and combining elements of many genres such as war films, time travel and historical drama.

[edit] Plot

The film begins with high-level military leaders from both sides discussing security issues in a secret underground bunker, apparently unbeknownst to either the US or the international community.

During a high-level, secret North-South meeting in an underground bunker, a North Korean officer, displeased with the conciliatory relationship with the South, rebels, steals a nuclear weapon from the facility along with several of his loyal soldiers, killing some North Korean guards in the process. Due to the top-secret nature of the meeting, the leaders of both sides cannot request reinforcements to apprehend the officer, and instead dispatch the South Korean guards that were present at the meeting.

However, in the middle of the conflict Halley's Comet appears in the sky - and this causes a "time rift" linking the present with other points in the comet's 433-year cycle of close approaches to the Earth. The modern Korean men (and one woman) unintentionally and to their surprise find themselves time traveling back from 2005 to 1572.

The soldiers on both two sides are in considerable confusion, unsure how to get home and where the nuke over which they had struggled had disappeared to. Also, the 16th Century Korea in which they find themselves is imminently threatened by an invasion of the Jurchen tribes. The soldiers find themselves divided between the option of using their modern weaponry and thus possibly changing history, or trying to return to their own time without aiding the Korean defenders against the Jurchens.

Meanwhile, the soldiers also encounter a local person who seems at first little more than a common thief, or at best "a cunning, slightly eccentric young man" - but who does seem to be making some efforts to organize opposition to the Jurchen invaders.

To their dismay, he eventually turns out to be none other than Yi Soon Shin, a major National Hero who would later have a major role in defeating the Japanese invasions of Korea (1592-1598) (the Imjin War) and become venerated in centuries to come (eventually having a prominent place in the heroic pantheons of both Korean states - though with each giving a very different political and ideological interpretation to his heroic deeds).

The most important achievements of Yi - not well known in the West - would be as an admiral, who won many sea battles against the Japanese invaders' fleets and was killed in action with the final victory in sight.

For the early part of his career, however, history does record Yi as having fought on land against the Jurchens. In fact, the film took some liberty with the dates in order to fit them with the passages of Halley's Comet; actually, Yi's campaigns against the Jurchen took place after his 1576 military examination, rather than in 1572 as in the film.

In the later parts of the film, the 21st Century North and South Koreans - enemies in our own time - do join forces with each other and with local villagers to fight the common Jurchen threat, and accept Yi's leadership - even if his actual self does not precisely conform with the image they gained from history books and national myths.

There follow some bloody sword battles, while a brilliant scientist seeks a way to travel home and the whereabouts of the controversial nuclear bomb remains in doubt - leaving the fate of both 16th Century Korea and the one of the 21st century hanging in the balance.

[edit] Reception

Financed with a comfortable budget by Korean standards ($7-8 million), the film was a relative commercial success in 2005. It's theme - where North and South Koreans are forced into alliance under the leadership of a hero venerated in both parts of contemporary Korea - is clearly intended as a plea for Korean Reunification.

[edit] External links