South Korean filmmaker Woo Min-ho has a knack for thrillers, having previously made the spy thriller The Man Standing Next, Inside Men, and The Spies, though that film takes a more comedic approach to the genre. His latest film is another spy thriller, Harbin, which fictionalizes the 1909 assassination of Itō Hirobumi by the Korean freedom fighter, Ahn Jung-geun.
Hyun Bin stars as Ahn, who is introduced on the heels of both winning and losing a recent conflict with Japanese forces occupying Korea. He won a battle, but after freeing prisoners of war out of a sense of honor, his regiment was slaughtered, and now his leadership and loyalty are being questioned by his compatriots.
Loyalty is key to Harbin, because Ahn suspects there is a Japanese mole in his ranks. Despite this, though, he decides the best way to demonstrate his loyalty to the Korean cause and his abilities as a soldier and leader are to assassinate Itō Hirobumi, the Japanese Prime Minister and first Resident General of Korea. Itō is travelling to Harbin, China to meet with Russian officials, and Ahn decides to assassinate Itō on the trip. The threat of a mole makes the mission especially fraught, though, and anything that can go wrong does, including the return of Ahn’s nemesis who decimated his regiment at the beginning of the film.
Harbin looks great, it’s handsomely directed by Woo and lensed by cinematographer Hong Kyung-pyo, with costumes by Katrina Liepa. Harsh but beautiful winter shots contrast with cramped train interiors, and the score, performed by the London Symphony Orchestra, swells with importance on the soundtrack, underscoring this critical moment in Korean history. The actors, however, are not best served by an overly busy script (from Woo and co-writer Kim Kyoung-chan) which stacks characters upon characters and does little to humanize any of them. Everyone is fanatically dedicated to the cause of Korean independence; Ahn is heroic at all times; Ahn’s Japanese nemesis, Mori (Park Hoon), is comically evil.
It's understandable to tell the story of a national hero with some degree of reverence, but the shallowness of Harbin hurts what is an otherwise entertaining spy thriller about searching for a mole while also trying to pull off a mission impossible-style assassination. Hyun is especially underserved by the script, having little chance to do anything than look stalwart as Ahn presses on with his mission. He does what he can with what he’s given, he just wasn’t given very much. Harbin feels of a piece with other nationalistic Korean films such as the similarly themed Assassination, which puts recounting important historical events above humanizing the people who committed these acts, which renders them inert as characters to audiences not already familiar with their history.
Overall, though, Harbin is mostly enjoyable. What it lacks in depth, it makes up in style, and while it is frustrating at times to watch good actors stranded by thin material, the twists and turns of Ahn’s journey provide plenty of drama. The action is also very well done, audiences unfamiliar with Korea’s history will probably take Harbin as an action movie, first and foremost. And it looks so good, with black and white flashbacks interspersed with Woo’s lush visuals in the “present” day of 1909. I wish the characters were better developed to match the effort of the craft in the film, but something tells me that isn’t really the point of Harbin. The point is for some of Korea’s best filmmakers to come together to tell the story of a national hero in a way that celebrates Korean pride, and in that, Harbin succeeds.
