[HanCinema's Film Review] "12.12: The Day"

General Chun (played by Hwang Jung-min) is a very obvious, very unsubtle stand-in for Chun Doo-hwan, the real-life military figure who took control of South Korea in 1980 in the wake of the previous leader's assassination. As a fictionalized approach to events that happened back then, "12.12: The Day" avoids being a mere Chun Doo-hwan biopic via the use of Commander Lee (played by Jung Woo-sung), who leads a doomed effort to prevent the coup from happening. Unfortunatey, General Chun is quite persistent.

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That is, oddly enough, the best word to describe General Chun. Despite his villainous behavior, General Chun never really acts evil so much as he acts resentful that nobody takes him seriously. And to be fair, it is a little odd that nobody takes General Chun seriously, given that he's at the center of a major political faction within the military that's able to scrape together enough support to depose the provisional democratic government. Commander Lee's responses to the ensuing crisis are a classic case of too little too late. As main characters go, this isn't one of Jung Woo-sung's more dynamic roles.

Hwang Jung-min, by contrast, is borderline genius in the way he presents General Chun as a surprisingly apolitical figure whose main grievance is his belief that other people are belittling him behind his back. Hwang Jung-min's exceptional performance goes a long way to making this work. Out of context his casting for this role was a little out of nowhere, but in context General Chun is basically just a more sinister version of Hwang Jung-min's usual character type, the seeming buffoon who's a great deal more hypercompetent than people appreciate.

Unlike more typical Hwang Jung-min roles, though, General Chun is given no moments of comic relief. "12.12: The Day" is deadly serious from start to finish, and the petty foundations of the premise just serve to underscore how tragic the entire situation was. Yet at the same, "12.12: The Day" is much more about bureaucratic maneuvering and negotiations than it is about the actual use of force. For such a big blockbuster, the on-screen violence is quite mild.

On that note, "12.12: The Day" was an unexpectedly huge hit for the 2023 holiday season, earning over 13 million viewers before leaving South Korean theaters. It's not too hard to see why. Much like "Exhuma" a few months after it, "12.12: The Day" tried its very best to treat its audience as consisting of intelligent, thoughtful adults who don't want to constantly be reminded that they're just watching a movie.

General Chun, in his real or fictional form, is rightly a very polarizing figure in South Korean political history. Yet he was also, at the end of the day, just a guy who saw an opportunity and took it. General Chun's main refrain throughout "12.12: The Day" is that they'll be revolutionaries if they succeed and traitors if they lose. At no point is the question ever asked, what exactly is General Chun rebelling against, because the answer will almost certainly just be, what do you got?

Review by William Schwartz

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"12.12: The Day" is directed by Kim Seong-su, and features Hwang Jung-min, Jung Woo-sung, Lee Sung-min, Park Hae-joon, Kim Sung-kyun, Kim Eui-sung. Release date in Korea: 2023/11/22.