On October 26, 1909, Itō Hirobumi, the first prime minister of Japan, was assassinated by Korean nationalists at the Harbin train station in Manchuria, China. If you ask a Korean why this happened, you might get an answer alone the lines of: “Because he was too arrogant not to be assassinated.”
I knew nothing of this piece of world history. As far as I know, the major political assassinations go from Lincoln (April 1865) to Archduke Ferdinand (June 1914). Yes, I am deliberately ignoring James Garfield and William McKinley when I say this. And yet, I’m pretty sure Hirobumi would have qualified, especially seeing as Japan forced Korea to be a Japanese protectorate (whatever that means) in 1905. I the wake of Japan beating the tsar out of Russia in 1905, the island nation got pretty big for its britches, bitches.
This is story of that assassination, but told entirely from the Korean POV. If Japanese nationalists are telling this story, it will probably come out far differently.
The “hero” is Ahn Jung-geun (Hyun Bin), a drifter by all other accounts. He was left for dead on a frozen river in the winter of 1909. (This was excellent cinematography, btw.) While he led a platoon in Korea’s battle against Japan, most of his men were now gone. Many also didn’t appreciate the part where he spared Japanese POWs. One specifically, a Japanese officer named Tatsuo Mori (Park Hoon) not only survived, but went on to destroy most of Jung-geun’s platoon and eventually led the effort to disrupt the assassination attempt.
The film spends a good deal of time and energy on Jung-geun’s motivation. It’s unclear as to whether he attempted suicide, but what is clear after picking himself up off the frozen river is that he needs to atone. And he’s decided the best and only way he can atone for letting down Korea is to assassinate Itō Hirobumi.
For his own part Itō Hirobumi is portrayed as disgustingly arrogant. He demeans Koreans at every turn and more-or-less discounts the danger once he learns of the attempt on his life. Not knowing a thing about Itō Hirobumi, I imagine this is artistic license to some extent, but it is impossible for me to say. Given a cadre and a travel plan, Jung-geun comes up with a blueprint for assassinating the Japanese PM. And early on, the Japanese know all about it.
Harbin is a tad rudimentary and a tad over-dramatic. I know that’s hard to do when we are talking about a major event in world history, but -if you think about it- anybody who romanticizes, say, John Wilkes Booth would be considered a loon. And that assessment would not be incorrect. Assassinations are not good things. Political assassinations are even worse. The odds that one will make the world a better place in either the short or the long term are very, very long … regardless of what a monster the target happens to be. I didn’t say non-existent; I just said, “long.” If nothing else here, I learned some history I never knew.
There once was an assassin name Jung
To nationalistic fervor he clung
So this his was his plan:
Kill Japan’s #1 man
Though success meant he’d likely get hung
Not Rated, 108 Minutes
Director: Min-ho Woo
Writer: Min-Seong Kim, Min-ho Woo
Genre: History you don’t know
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Korean nationalists
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Japanese nationalists