Ahn Jung-geun, a Korean independence fighter, shot and killed Japanese statesman Hirobumi Ito at the train station in Harbin — a northeastern Chinese city then under Russian control — on Oct. 26, 1909. Generations of Koreans have since revered him as a national hero. The Japanese government, which ruled Korea as a colony from 1910 to 1945, once regarded him as a terrorist.

All of the movies about Ahn have understandably been Korean, though the latest, Woo Min-ho’s “Harbin” is not a flag-waving celebration of his violent gesture of resistance. Rather, the film, which became a No. 1 hit in South Korea following its December 2024 release, is somber in tone, shot in richly atmospheric browns and grays in South Korea, Mongolia and Latvia — the latter a stand-in for Harbin and Russia’s Vladivostok.

Also, Hyun Bin as Ahn is a complex personality with a cloud of self-chosen doom hanging over him. And his allies in his assassination plot have their own identities and narrative arcs that make “Harbin” more of an ensemble piece than a one-man show.