Janggunui adeul II (1991)

User Rating:

6.5/10   

Director:

Kwon-taek Im

Writer:

Song-yu Hong (writer)

Release Date:

20 July 1991 (South Korea)

Genre:

Action | Crime | Drama

Plot Keywords:

Sequel

Cast

Sang-min Park	...	Kim Doo-han
Il-jae Lee
Chae-hwan Song
Hyeon-jun Shin	...	Hayashi
Mi-hyang Bae
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Doo-hong Jung

Also Known As:

General's Son II (International: English title)
Son of a General II (USA)

Runtime:

103 min

Country:

South Korea

Language:

Japanese | Korean

Certification:

South Korea:15

Company:

Taehung Pictures

Movie Connections:

Follows Janggunui adeul (1990)

More of everything, including flaws.

General's Son II is everything you would expect in a sequel to a popular action film: Bigger fights! Bigger stakes! More! More! More! And in this regard, General's Son II delivers. Of course, it also delivers more of the problems that plagued the original as well.

The story now follows Kim Doohan as he is released from prison into the city, which has since been mostly taken over by the Japanese Yakuza group from the previous film. Pressured and also recently released, Doohan's boss makes a non-confrontation pact with the Yakuza to regain control of their turf, but as a result makes them pay a rough tribute and squeezes the gang. Meanwhile Doohan is wooed by a Japanese bar courtesan, leading to further tensions in the gang. Of course, this can't go on forever, so at some point the Corean gang goes off and builds and faces down its opposition and everything you might expect to happen (yes, lots of fighting) happens. In addition, Doohan's main fighting rival from the previous film rejoins the cast as a rival for Doohan's other love interest in this film. Yeah, it's all a little complicated.

Point is, the story has a lot more going on, which I suppose is an attempt to make the story bigger, but just leaves even more room for storytelling problems to occur. Especially notable is the story's inability to focus and to track tertiary characters or set the tone for the importance of characters. You think some characters are throwaway and they end up being important. Then you thing some characters are important and they vanish for a large chunk of the movie. Also, the film has a problem keeping Doohan as protagonist, as his rival's POV seems to occasionally overtake his, making it confusing as to who we're supposed to follow. The film also tries to "broaden" its view of the Japanese away from being solely villains by adding some sympathetic Japanese to the mix, but the film's flag-waving anti-Japanese nationalism strikes so strongly against it that it just ends up sending a lot of mixed messages. Finally, I have a little problem with how lightly the two supporting female characters are treated. While, at least the one that Doohan seems to particularly care about seems to have some backstory revealed, she ultimately appears to be treated as a means to push the drama between the boys and goes *poof*, just like the love interest from the previous film, who goes entirely forgotten and unmentioned here.

At least the camera-work is still pretty good. And the fights are also fairly good too, but although there are more fights, the film unfortunately keeps many of them short, minus a very large scale fight at the end.

Unfortunately, the film suffers from the diminishing returns often found in sequels. Despite that everything is bigger and more plentiful, the cracks in the armor are also broadened and as a result, the charm from the original gets stretched past its ability to cover the cracks. The film isn't thoroughly unwatchable, mind you. It still retains some of what made the original at least somewhat interesting. It's just that everything that's wrong gets magnified and the "improvements" don't really add to the film. The film just is too chaotic in its story to hold together and the ship appears to be sinking. Also, the sense of closure is even more ambiguous than The Empire Strikes Back, leaving it a sequel that begs a third, much like the second Matrix. Another note is that this film is leagues more chaste than its predecessor, lacking any sex, or even much affection shown on screen at all.

I'd say you can safely stop with the first one, but this one is just barely survivable as a watch. It's just unfortunate that it begs the third, because the third is the torpedo that takes down the ship, so I can't recommend this. 5/10.