The Age of Shadows

South Korean director Kim Jee-woon's sprawling spy thriller, set in the underground resistance during the Japanese occupation of Korea in the 1920s, is inspired by a real-life bombing in Seoul in 1923, but the plot is complete fantasy, a double agent cloak-and-dagger tale of loyalty, betrayal, shifting allegiances, feints, blackmail, and all sorts of unexpected twists. Song Kang-ho stars as a Korean-born police detective working for the occupying Japanese police to root out the resistance and he engages in a cat-and-mouse game with a cagey agent (Gong Yoo) who is on a mission to bomb a major Japanese stronghold. The story travels from Seoul to Shanghai and back, and features a superbly directed sequence on a train as the Japanese police search for the Korean resistance agents. Song's conflicted officer—the most interesting character in a cast of driven Koreans fighting for liberation and sadistic Japanese occupiers who torture and kill Korean suspects—keeps audiences guessing where his allegiances ultimately lie, right up to the satisfying climax. South Korea's submission for the Academy Awards, this is recommended. (S. Axmaker)