... a film that will probably mean most to viewers from Korea, where it was made - though you don't need to know much about the historical background to gather roughly what the story is meant to suggest about the present.
The recreation of a historic moment in Korea's constantly embattled past becomes a rather enervating epic in the too diaogue-driven hands of director Hwang Dong-hyuk.
Hwang competently orchestrates the film's disparate political and strategic developments, but there's little sense of stylistic inspiration or narrative innovation - it's all pretty conventional.