A historical naval war movie with good production value, nice cast, but a subpar screen writing.

As an admiral who famously defended the Korean strait with only 12 ships against 300+ Japanese adversaries, Yi Sun-Shin isn't written as an interesting character. His speech to boost the morale of his soldiers doesn't inspire any confidence, and his tactical genius doesn't really shine. 10 of his 12 ships fleet only show up in the last 15 minutes of the battle - which is strange, since his "turning fear to courage" tactic is supposed to bring more people into the battle. He really carried the whole battle by himself/his flagship, relying only on pure luck (whirpool, sea tides, and random clamoring of escaping civilians) and one small support from his XO.

In a similar vein, the Japanese antagonists are not written that interestingly. They're nothing but brute invaders. Either they're scaredy cats (Kato et al) or incompetent commanders who think too highly of themselves (Kurushima). The final battle scene, both against Kurushima and against the remaining Japanese fleet, feels really anticlimactic. The supposedly competent Kurushima just charges against storming arrows and the rest of the Korean ships somehow manage to barge against the remaining Japanese fleet relatively unscathed (and that's a lot of ships to barge).

And while the naval combat is good, the close combat sequences leave much room for improvement. You do get them interspersed within the naval battles.

Last, the last 15 minutes of the 1 hour battle scene is just full wishful thinking like what you typically see in Korean war movies regardless of setting, unfortunately. This is a shame since the event it's based on is a turning tide (pun intended) that merits a glorious depiction.

To sum it up: the first hour (story and drama building) is a-okay, the next 45 minutes is good war movie (war starts exactly after 1 hour), the next 15 minutes is anticlimactic and unsatisfying, and the rest 8 minutes is just happy ending and credits.

Still a worthwhile watch just for the production value alone though. :)