‘Battleship Island’ director Ryoo figured Song could portray darker character
SEOUL: The Battleship Island director Ryoo Seung-wan got the right hunch when he reckoned that actor Song Joong-ki could go beyond stereotypical roles.
Said Ryoo during a press conference to unveil the movie on Wednesday: “I just felt that ( Song) would be capable of portraying a darker character despite his clean- cut looks.”
Ryoo added that he had always wanted to make an escape thriller. “Escaping can be interpreted as an attempt to deal with the past,” Ryoo said before the press screening.
The war flick is set on Japan’s Hashima Island, where Koreans were taken captive as slave labourers in mines during the Japanese colonisation of Korea.
Song plays a soldier in the Korean Liberation Army who sneaks onto the island on a rescue mission.
Though the heroic character is similar to the one Song played in 2016’s smash-hit TV drama Descendants of the Sun, director Ryoo had shot Battleship Island before the series began airing.
The film has spiralled into a major blockbuster set to hit summer box offices. Director Ryoo, however, had no intention of exploiting a painful historical past for ticket sales.
“It wasn’t my intention to take this dramatic moment in history and target the summer movie market, but despite my intentions, it’s turned into a huge project,” he said. “I only hope I will not do an injustice to history.”