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Critics Consensus: The Age of Shadows justifies its imposing length with a richly detailed period drama whose sprawling size is matched by strong acting, impressive craft, and narrative depth.
Critic Consensus: The Age of Shadows justifies its imposing length with a richly detailed period drama whose sprawling size is matched by strong acting, impressive craft, and narrative depth.
All Critics (43) | Top Critics (10) | Fresh (43) | Rotten (0)
It's a rich stew of a tale, with Korean resistance fighters, Hungarian revolutionaries, Japanese police officials and double agents. Running at 140 minutes, "The Age of Shadows" is worth every moment.
Kim sometimes loses the rhythm of his spy thriller, but he's such a confident filmmaker-and his leading man such a magnetic presence-that he quickly gets its back.
You'd be hard-pressed to find a more lavishly staged staged chunk of pulp nonsense.
For this director, exposition can't hold a candle to elegantly staged shootouts. And who can blame him. He knows his strengths.
The screenwriters, Lee Ji-min and Park Jong-dae, embellish this crafty scenario with no shortage of ingenious complications, effectively doubling the number of double agents at every turn.
Patriotism and self-interest clash powerfully in "The Age of Shadows," a stylish and morally complex thriller set largely in Japanese-occupied 1920s Seoul.
With stellar performances, thrilling set-pieces, masterful storytelling and top-notch production values, The Age of Shadows is a must-see for anyone who loves period films, spy thrillers and cloak-and-dagger flicks. Highly recommended.
Kim Jee-woon's political piece is played like an American gangster drama, with all the cliches that suggests... Kim Jee-woon's political piece is played like an American gangster drama, with all the cliches that suggests.
The story is inspired by the real-life bombing of the Japanese police headquarters in Seoul but the plot is complete fantasy, a double agent cloak-and-dagger thriller of loyalty, betrayal, shifting allegiances, feints, blackmail...
Here is a film where allegiances, ulterior motives and loyalties are as transient and alluring as the moonlight which shimmers on black leather uniforms and across glistening roof tiles.
A satisfying cloak-and-dagger thriller set in Japanese-occupied Korea during the 1920s, Kim Jee-woon's The Age of Shadows betrays a kind of business-like approach to spy games, institutional and otherwise.
Never decaying in pace, the film provides us with thrilling Hitchcockian sequences on a train, suspenseful ambushes, treacherous inside men working in the shadows, and incredible shootouts at the sound of Louis Armstrong.
Jee-woon Kim isn't coy about the narrative, we know where the character's loyalties lie and who/what they are playing. You'd think this would suck the tension out of this kind of movie, but it merely shifts the plot's focus to more interesting areas.
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