Uprising - Netflix Movie

Uprising | Official Trailer | Netflix
Netflix

Bloody, violent, grisly film about Koreans fighting against a Japanese invasion during the late 16th Century. If that's not enough, a rebellion blows up in the aftermath. 

This movie is kind of confusing, partly because they jump back and forth in time and partly because several of the Koreans appear to be clones. You'd think, after watching as many Korean shows as I have, I would be able to easily distinguish them, but such is not the case.

The story focuses on a rich kid and a slave who are brought together as children and grow up in the same house / compound. The slave's initial job is to be the whipping boy for the rich kid who is learning to fight with a sword. Every time the rich kid makes a mistake with his sword, the slave gets a stroke from a cane. The slave soon tires of this so undertakes to teach the rich kid the techniques he needs so he won't make mistakes in training and so the slave doesn't get whipped anymore. The slave eventually graduates to becoming the rich kid's instructor.

When he comes of age, the rich kid goes to take an exam to enter the military, but he repeatedly fails. Eventually the slave takes the exam for him with the promise that he will be freed if he succeeds. He succeeds and the father reneges on his promise. The same thing happens later on with the king. All the peasants who volunteered to fight against the Japanese are promised freedom, but the king reneges on his promise. Slimy nobles.

There is a Japanese high-ranking soldier known for cutting off Korean noses. He has a bunch of treasure chests hidden in a cave. The rebels find the chests and are making off with them when they are ambushed by a group of soldiers. The group is actually two groups, one Japanese and one Korean, working together. Both the Koreans and the Japanese are armed with matchlock rifles. Through some careful choreography the Koreans manage to arrange themselves so they get the drop on their Japanese comrades. Their commander gives the order to fire and the Koreans do, but their guns blow up because the Japanese were in charge of maintaining the guns and had blocked the barrels. I suppose a double load would do the trick, i.e. load it with powder and ball once, and then load it again. They fall upon each other and everyone dies except the two leaders, so we get a swordfight. But wait! Our guy shows up and he can't wait to kill both of them so he jumps in and now we've got a three way sword fight.

Eventually the treasure chests get delivered to the king where upon they are opened and we find they are full of people's noses packed in salt.

From the Wikipedia page about the war:

The Japanese invasions of Korea, commonly known as the Imjin War, involved two separate yet linked invasions: an initial invasion in 1592, a brief truce in 1596, and a second invasion in 1597. The conflict ended in 1598 with the withdrawal of Japanese forces from the Korean Peninsula after a military stalemate in Korea's southern provinces.

The Japanese and Korean forces were roughly comparable. The Japanese lost roughly 100,000 troops but the Koreans lost a million people, mostly civilians.