Uprising (2024)
An era of chaos. A battle against destiny.
I sorted out about six or seven different trailers for tonight’s choices of movie, and the winner was this here Asian - subtitles would tell me Korean to be specific - Netflix option. Sometimes it’s funny, as with the limited interactions I have with a wide swath of cultures (what with not making the kind of funds that would produce constant travel, and living in the middle of nowhere meaning even if I wanted to actively seek it locally it’d be more likely I’d end up just talking to a lot of livestock who would talk back quite animatedly but way less understandably) I start looking back at some of the older movies I’ve watched and wonder how many of the specific Asian countries and regions I’ve totally been mistaking in them. I noticed it a while back when it came to noticing some similarities specifically in less swordplay and more martial arts related period Japanese and Chinese stuff, but then you realize just how much influence around the regions mixing there is in movies and it starts to get even more blurry - all of which to say that it’s probably obvious to someone whose well versed in it and they probably would have a good laugh about just how inept I am at telling different cultures apart until i get a large set of obviously labeled things to go off of. Anyways, rambling aside, tonight’s movie is just about what everyone is feeling after listening to me prattle on for so long about nothing -tonight is Uprising.
Our story is one of slavery, the relationship between the masses and their leaders, and war. It could be a bit rough at first, as it jumps between when our characters were young and the “present” - at least before it does a time skip forward a bit later in. One of our mains gets rewarded with becoming a slave because his mom got bought into slavery to pay things off - and in ancient logic, kid was part of mom and therefore is part of being a slave. His specific role is actually effectively “whipping boy” - when his masters son screws up in sword training he gets beat instead of the master’s kid because you can’t have a famous royal person getting all scarred up, that just won’t do. Like some sort of family movie, the two actually end up forming a friendship, but royals gonna royal and his dad doesn’t keep his word when it comes to freeing his friend as per the deal the two had struck with getting him to finally pass his military exam. When they are grown up, the slave main keeps escaping and getting caught, and things are very turned upside down when Japan shows up and starts wrecking stuff, leading to an opening where the slaves (but not technically our main) revolt and murder and burn down the master’s stuff and people while the head dude (and the master’s son) are escaping off. It leads to a whole misunderstanding between the two friends, and after a time skip we get to see just how unfortunate it is to be considered a lower person by the higher ups with treachery abound.
It’s a bit over 2 hours long, so if it sounds like that’s a lot to unpack don’t worry - it plays out way more understandable when not getting condensed into one paragraph, time jumps aside. Our actors do a pretty good job here, but I have to admit not knowing Korean or Japanese I’m purely going off of how it feels like they are emoting in a more general sense. Line deliveries can carry an energy or feeling even without understanding it, so I feel like at the very least when someone is dropping an emotionally charged line of anger or sadness it comes across quite solid. Even the kid actors do a decent job, and at least one of them gets to have some pretty fun choreography as well. When it comes to the fights, people still do a good job, and there’s a couple of times where someone really sells the hits - perhaps maybe a bit over sells the hits, but it’s all good in my book. Again, even in the fights some of the actors do a great job carrying over an emotional energy to things - so despite reading you’ll still get what they are dropping pretty well across the board.
The characters are all over. I don’t mean it like a bad thing - just that there are a lot of them. The main two are of course the focus as far as development, and the constant swapping between what one is doing and the other is a great amount of juxtaposition for the more thematic minded folks out there. Some of the side characters might not get the same amount of development, but they don’t really have to - they have a character that they stick with so nobody suddenly acts out of person, and the only thing that might lead you to confuse one character for the next is how incredibly similar the costumes are between the characters - indeed, most the time your only queue as to it being someone else in the regals is how old they look. Our one main gets the lovely blue robe that begets the nickname earned by his combat prowess from the Japanese troops - the blue-robed god. Our other main however fits into the royal crowd, so there is a lot of times where if you get a bit blind when it comes to faces you might get lost. Still, I think folks will like how the two play out and against and with each other, and it also helps make characters tie into how the story develops it’s themes.
Master and slave, or a couple of friends?
Costumes are period for the most part, but since we do get some Japanese troops in here we get a little bit of extra flair that we might not get in other Korean flicks. That said, it does lack some of the more fantastical elements and more elaborate bandit style costumes that I’ve seen in a few Korean flicks - so it’s a pretty even trade there. That said, there is still a lot of color and style to the costumes for the period, so even if you will see a lot of “lower people” in raggedy clothes, there’s some fancy hats and things that let you know you are in a older setting. It’s always a treat for me over something like a modern setting, because you become so used to seeing normal everyday clothes that even if you’ve seen a bunch of formal black robes from back in the day, it’s at least not another Ambercrombie dress shirt. Setting is pretty containded with options. It’s mostly just the one city and the outer areas of it, but it doesn’t end up feeling stale at all since things are frequently happening regardless of if you’ve been to that setting already or not and some of them pick up emotional value given the events of the movie. We also get to see some nice foggy beach action towards the end.
Props are good, with a spattering of different weapons from flails to bows, slings to old powder rifles, and a plethora of swords. We’ve got curved and straight swords here, some with larger guards and some with smaller guards - so it’s a fun thing that you don’t really spend too much time in the details of outside a few clashes in the combat mix, but being a sword fan I’m down with it anyways. The fights themselves are constructed pretty good, without feeling too overly cut-filled for the sake of cutting. The movie folks know when to pull back and show a lot and when to crash in and focus on the little details. Yeah, at times it might be a bit much to follow super smoothly, but it’s never confusing and I’d argue I was run around by a time change or two than I ever was something happening in the choreography. It’s fun, but certainly doesn’t always shy away from being violent when it want’s to emphasize a point. It does do a few things that I know some people get off put by - like the whole one person fighting in the middle of a large group, and it’s very movie in that regard - but I still enjoyed it.
Audio is pretty good, music swelling up and dying down in a classical orchestral fashion - although with more region appropriate instruments and what I’m thinking may have been a few nice guitar chords for some extra oomph. Line deliveries I think were good - at least in audio balance if nothing else, since I can’t understand the language. I did have a laugh when I realized that the subtitles would occasionally call out a translator or characters switching to speaking in English - even though nobody in the movie actually would do so audibly - to talk back and forth. I almost think it might be a bit of a mislabeling of the subtitles part - I think what’s happening is it’s swapping between Japanese and Korean, and would have been more reasonable to just always throw “in Japanese” in front of the Japanese lines. This is a bit further supported by the fact that if you turn off the English subtitles, it hard-subs the Japanese parts in (what I imagine is) Korean. Just a little thing I picked up on. Anyways, for the thinking parts there is a absolute ton in here to do with history, classes, teachings, misunderstandings, friendships, trust, and other stuff that someone better at it could pick out than me. That’s not even accounting for the fact that I’m not one for insider news on historical Japanese and Korean relations - but from some of these movies I’m pretty well starting to believe China, Korean, and Japan all have a long history of not getting along. It’s like that Simpsons joke about the Scots not getting along with anyone.
China vs Japan is basically peanut butter and jelly if the peanuts hated the jellies.
Anyways, this was a good one. I’m partial to sword movies to begin with, and despite being too stupid to always understand which region of Asian movie I’m actually watching I’ve enjoyed the cinema for years now. The semi-historical nature I wouldn’t know enough to refute or confirm in any way, but when it comes to a story about honor, friendship, and one’s word and soul it’s hard to beat a through and through martial arts flick - especially if it’s set in the past. In this case, it’s also another great example of how slavery really isn’t the best idea, but peppered with fun action scenes and some emotional keystones. It also tried to fake me out and make me thing it was going to end the movie before the final battle played out - so that was rude, but outside of that I’m saying it’s a decent thing to check out if you like these historical kind of movies.