Synopsis
The Battleship Island (군함도, 2017) is a Korean war drama you can watch online on iFILM, directed by Ryoo Seung-wan and starring Hwang Jung-min, So Ji-sub and Song Joong-ki. Hashima Island — six hectares of concrete rising from the East China Sea off Nagasaki, with coal seams running under the seabed. August 1945. Around four hundred Koreans are trapped there, lured by Japanese recruiters who promised decent wages.
Among them: a bandleader named Lee Gang-ok who arrived with his young daughter thinking he'd signed up for a performance contract. He got a coal shaft instead. Other prisoners include a jazz musician with underground resistance ties and a covert agent inserted on the island for a classified extraction. As Japan's position in the war collapses, the guards grow desperate — and for the first time, escape starts to feel possible.
Director Ryoo makes no effort to soften the film's anger at Japanese colonial-era labor practices, and the mass breakout sequence in the final act is one of the most elaborate action set pieces in Korean cinema from that decade. Stream The Battleship Island (2017) online on iFILM.
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