Thursday, August 7, 2008

The Legend of the Shadowless Sword


Ever since the relatively recent successes of Asian swordplay epics like "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," "Hero," and "House of Flying Daggers," we have seen more such movies come and go. Now, from the newly rejuvenated South Korean film industry comes this 2005 entry, "Muyeong geom" ("The Shadowless Sword," "Superfighters," or the DVD title New Line have given it here, "The Legend of the Shadowless Sword"). Although it has its moments, compared to the finest the genre has to offer, "Shadowless Sword" is ordinary at best.

As with most of these things, the tale takes place in the ancient past, and characters and events appear based on myth and legend. Therefore, expect not only a good deal of sword fighting and arrow shooting but the usual assortment of beautiful women, good and bad, a dashing hero, a venomous villain, and various hangers on, all jumping, kicking, running, dancing, and flying through their scenes in highly choreographed fantasy ballets.

The star of the show is a lovely young woman named Yeon Soha, played by Yoon Soy. I am going to use the names of the characters as they appear on the keep case because the names appear differently in the movie's closing credits, differently again in the disc's featurettes, and differently once more at IMDb. English translations can be hard on Asian names.

Anyway, Yeon is a First Officer in the country of Belhae's military and a top warrior around 927 A.D. It's at that time that we take up the story, about a year after the Georan army invaded Belhae, captured its capital, and started systematically killing off its royal family. There is only one Prince of Belhae left, Dae Jung Hyun (Lee Seo Jin), and he's in hiding. Yeon's job is to find the Prince and return him safely to Belhae to lead his people against the evil Georans. Fortunately, she's very good at her job.

Hot on the Prince's tail and eager to assassinate him is the Killer Blade Army, a group of traitors to Belhae who are now in the employ of the Georans. Their leader is Gun Hwa-Pyung (Shin Hyun Joon), who, along with his deadly, cold-blooded female sidekick Mae Youngok (Lee Ki Yong), heads out to assassinate the only surviving Prince.

The plot, then, is about Yeon and the Prince trying to get back to Belhae before Gun and Mae and their Killer Blade cohorts can find and eliminate them. Not as easy as it sounds, though, since the Prince doesn't want to return to his homeland, nor does he want to get killed. The story line allows director Kim Young Jun ("Bichunmoo" or "Flying Warriors") a chance to exercise a little imagination in creating a wealth of preposterous, though overly familiar, action sequences.

OK, the first thing you have to do is get over the movie's rather ponderous title, as well as the business of the "Killer Blade Army." To suggest that these names might be just a little corny would probably upset fanciers of the genre, so let's just say you have to have a certain predisposition toward overwrought melodramatics to appreciate the goings on, even in the naming of things.

On the plus side, the movie has all the usual pageantry and busyness on screen that one expects of such movies, although the budget wasn't quite big enough, it seems, for massive armies, whether they're CGI or otherwise. Still, the film is colorful, and the director moves the action along at an acceptable pace. There is rarely any lallygagging with romantic entanglements or interpersonal relationships. Mostly, we find a little talk here and there to establish character backgrounds and to explain what's happening at any given time, and then it's on to the next fight sequence. What's more, the scenery, costumes, and landscapes are attractive, and the cinematography is appealing. So, the movie is quite nice on the eyes.

On the minus side, once beyond the scenery, costumes, and landscapes, there isn't much more than the sword fighting, and that gets old fast, especially when the movie doesn't present it any more creatively than we've seen it done dozens of times before. I mean, how often have we watched the supercool hero (or heroine) turn his or her back on the villains, outnumbered five or ten or twenty to one, strike a pose for a moment, wait for their advance, and then wipe them out with a few kicks and swats? I guess we can thank "Enter the Dragon" for popularizing the trend.

Ever since the relatively recent successes of Asian swordplay epics like "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," "Hero," and "House of Flying Daggers," we have seen more such movies come and go. Now, from the newly rejuvenated South Korean film industry comes this 2005 entry, "Muyeong geom" ("The Shadowless Sword," "Superfighters," or the DVD title New Line have given it here, "The Legend of the Shadowless Sword"). Although it has its moments, compared to the finest the genre has to offer, "Shadowless Sword" is ordinary at best.

As with most of these things, the tale takes place in the ancient past, and characters and events appear based on myth and legend. Therefore, expect not only a good deal of sword fighting and arrow shooting but the usual assortment of beautiful women, good and bad, a dashing hero, a venomous villain, and various hangers on, all jumping, kicking, running, dancing, and flying through their scenes in highly choreographed fantasy ballets.

The star of the show is a lovely young woman named Yeon Soha, played by Yoon Soy. I am going to use the names of the characters as they appear on the keep case because the names appear differently in the movie's closing credits, differently again in the disc's featurettes, and differently once more at IMDb. English translations can be hard on Asian names.

Anyway, Yeon is a First Officer in the country of Belhae's military and a top warrior around 927 A.D. It's at that time that we take up the story, about a year after the Georan army invaded Belhae, captured its capital, and started systematically killing off its royal family. There is only one Prince of Belhae left, Dae Jung Hyun (Lee Seo Jin), and he's in hiding. Yeon's job is to find the Prince and return him safely to Belhae to lead his people against the evil Georans. Fortunately, she's very good at her job.

Hot on the Prince's tail and eager to assassinate him is the Killer Blade Army, a group of traitors to Belhae who are now in the employ of the Georans. Their leader is Gun Hwa-Pyung (Shin Hyun Joon), who, along with his deadly, cold-blooded female sidekick Mae Youngok (Lee Ki Yong), heads out to assassinate the only surviving Prince.

The plot, then, is about Yeon and the Prince trying to get back to Belhae before Gun and Mae and their Killer Blade cohorts can find and eliminate them. Not as easy as it sounds, though, since the Prince doesn't want to return to his homeland, nor does he want to get killed. The story line allows director Kim Young Jun ("Bichunmoo" or "Flying Warriors") a chance to exercise a little imagination in creating a wealth of preposterous, though overly familiar, action sequences.

OK, the first thing you have to do is get over the movie's rather ponderous title, as well as the business of the "Killer Blade Army." To suggest that these names might be just a little corny would probably upset fanciers of the genre, so let's just say you have to have a certain predisposition toward overwrought melodramatics to appreciate the goings on, even in the naming of things.

On the plus side, the movie has all the usual pageantry and busyness on screen that one expects of such movies, although the budget wasn't quite big enough, it seems, for massive armies, whether they're CGI or otherwise. Still, the film is colorful, and the director moves the action along at an acceptable pace. There is rarely any lallygagging with romantic entanglements or interpersonal relationships. Mostly, we find a little talk here and there to establish character backgrounds and to explain what's happening at any given time, and then it's on to the next fight sequence. What's more, the scenery, costumes, and landscapes are attractive, and the cinematography is appealing. So, the movie is quite nice on the eyes.

On the minus side, once beyond the scenery, costumes, and landscapes, there isn't much more than the sword fighting, and that gets old fast, especially when the movie doesn't present it any more creatively than we've seen it done dozens of times before. I mean, how often have we watched the supercool hero (or heroine) turn his or her back on the villains, outnumbered five or ten or twenty to one, strike a pose for a moment, wait for their advance, and then wipe them out with a few kicks and swats? I guess we can thank "Enter the Dragon" for popularizing the trend.

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