Brief Story Line
Tae-yul (Jang Hyuk - Volcano High, Windstruck etc) said to be the best swordsman in Joseon (kingdom of Korea) had retired and living with his daughter Tae-ok (Kim Hyun-soo - Solomon's Perjury TV series etc) in the mountains. When Tae-yul's eyesight became worse due to previous injury, both of them went to town looking for medicines. However, the Qing dynasty of China led by their representative, the great martial artist Gurutai (Joe Taslim - Warrior TV series, Hit & Run etc) and his group of thugs were wreaking havoc and sadly Tae-yul and Tae-ok were caught in the middle.
Meanwhile swords master Seung-ho (Jung Man-sik - Rampant etc) who was working as a military official was trying to keep peace in the country, including making sure the safety of Qing's officials despite his despise towards them.
So what would happen to Tae-yul who only wanted to keep his daughter safe but instead had to fight for his life against seemingly everyone? Find them all in this cool martial arts movie.
End of Brief Story Line
Wow this movie has some breath taking swords fight scenes. They were wonderfully done and truly excited me. I am a fan of of this kind of genre which I normally would only get from watching Chinese/Hong Kong movies or TV series. But for a while now, I had not seen any high quality movies of such from those countries. So it was satisfying that I could get the same kind of excitement from watching a movie from different country.
To be honest, I was not familiar with the lead character Jang Hyuk as I have not seen that many South Korean movies/series, so I did not have any expectation at all. However, after watching him, I was quite intrigued to see the film that brought him instant stardom Volcano High. His nemesis in here was played by a name totally familiar for me, i.e. Joe Taslim. I think he was actually the reason why I wanted to watch this movie in the first place. Another surprising cast who was very good in sword fight was Jung Man-sik which created a trio of great sword experts here. Oh before I forgot, there was also Lee Min-hyuk who was quite awesome playing young Tae-yul.
For a martial arts movie, I thought this one quite delivered. The sword fights were fantastic and I was really entertained during the almost nonstop sequence in the "headquarters" of Qing's army and Gurutai's thugs. That was absolutely amazing and wonderfully done. Now there was one thing though that I thought could have been added, which was to give more time for Gurutai to show his great fighting skills. A movie such as this would have been more perfect if we were shown how good the villain was, so the climax would have been totally awesome.
The story itself seemed to be quite universal where the protagonist was being pressurized to defend himself after going through difficult ordeals by the villain. It brought familiar feeling to those old Chinese Kung Fu movies. However, the back story involving the history of Korea was something that I personally could not relate to. Btw, I also noticed that the movie was fully dubbed in Korean language, as there was a scene when Qing and Joseon officials were using translators (which made it funny when both of them already conversing in same language).
Overall I was quite satisfied by the swords fight scenes in here and enjoyed the greatly done sequence. If only Joe Taslim had more fight scenes, I would be even more entertained. So if you are looking for a good martial arts movie, with heavy violence, not too much drama (yes there was a bit of it but not overly melodramatic) and not the most original story, then this should be a nice option. You could check TVN Movies channel to find out the movie's schedule.
Mike's movie moments rating: 3.5 out 5 stars
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