Musa-warrior [dvd/ws Anamorphic/dd 5.1/dts/eng-sub]

I wouldn't have known about this movie if I wasn't an Amazondotcommer. I found it in one of those, "if you bought this DVD, you'd want to buy this too" follow-ups. So I thought I'd click on it and was surprise to see that it was a South Korean movie. I have never seen a Korean movie before, so I decided to order the DVD with high expectations due to the good reviews of fellow Amazoners. And you know what, I wasn't dissappointed at all. This movie is terrific. It has all the elements of an "edge-of-your-seat" adventure: love, honour, bravery, conflict, vast sceneries and loads and loads of testestorone driven battle scenes. What's not to like about this movie. Compare it all you want to other similiar Hollywood movies until the sun goes down, at the end, it is movie in itself. No trace of Hollywood here. It has a subtlety that is unique. This is evident in the numerous sub-plots. The kidnapped Ming princess is obviously smittened by the spear wielding, ex slave, Yeosol and he in return is equally enamoured, but these asumptions are only culled from certain gestures, a word spoken here and there and yet their love for each other is so palpable. And how about the young general, Choi. His reason for saving the princess as he tells it to his men, is a ticket out of China. Yeah, right. The second that a breeze lifts the Princess's veil and he was able to see her stuning porcelain face, is the moment he decided to save her. Imagine these two good looking, verile men fighting to the death just for her. Just enough to make a girl swone. This movie is full of little gems like this.The movie is also full of interesting characters like the Yuan General(Yu Ruan Goung from "Iron Monkey"), the archery expert, Sergeant Jinlip, the cowardly novice, Douchong and they even managed to throw in a pregnant peasant.The movie moves swiftly with no slow parts, and though it is very gory, (everything gets lopped-off including the horses, guess they don't have PETA over there in Korea) I think the bloody scenes are not gratitious and thye are well justified.My favorite thing about this movie is how the three characters relate to each other and how in very little words and gestures, are able to convey the essence of who they are. And as the events unfold to its tragic end, you can see that each have resolve their own fears even if it means their demise.The 130 minutes didn't feel long and if anything, I hated for this movie to end. I thoroughly enjoyed it. My only complain is that this DVD has NO EXTRAS at all. It is handsomely packaged but NO EXTRAS. would have been nice. But thank god, it's not dubbed.

as well as the beautifully choreographed fighting. The hero, Yeosol, knows he can never get the girl, but he does get her heart, and he knows it by halfway through the film. Pain, self-sacrifice and death are the consummation of his passion. The interaction between him and the princess is subtle - an indrawn breath, a shudder as he passes near her, her acceptance of his dominant posturing, and the climatic scene where she slaps him until he grabs her hand, refusing to let her go until she asks nicely, her hand relaxes in his (film convention weaving hands rather than bodies), he lets her go, and she runs off, leaving our invincible hero shaking and for a moment completely unmanned. Wonderful. How old are the pair? The script seems to suggest they're very young. The hero is a freed slave whose former master refers to him as a child or a boy. But the actor (Jung Woo-Sung) is in his thirties and, though he has an ageless beauty of face, he carries himself with authority, and in the film he casually kills men in a way that wouldn't be credible for a stripling (like the youth, Danseng, whom he takes under his wing - and on the DVD don't miss deleted scene six for a bit more there). The heroine is likewise very young, we might think, from her impetuous behaviour in running off from the stifling palace, thus (presumably) getting herself kidnapped and starting the whole tragic sequence of events. The tentativeness, but, at the same time, the frankness, of the two lovers' feelings for each other, in a situation where anything physical between them is totally impossible, would fit with extreme youth. Watch every flicker of the eye, every inclination of the body - this is all done with the utmost discretion, but if you realise that nobody else (like the Korean general, the other poor sap who falls in love with her) even dares to raise his eyes and look the princess in the face ... well, that will give you a baseline, and you can read the interactions in those terms, not in western ones. One thing that was frustrating about watching the film with subtitles was that I often didn't know whether people understood each other. Evidently some of the more senior Koreans do speak Chinese, but what about the hero? When he and the princess speak (or more often, yell) at each other, does either of them understand the other? Are they communicating entirely on a visceral level? I thought this film was as sexy as all get out. The battle scenes are harrowing, because the characters are believable and likeable, including the enemy general. The men on either side respect each other. They fight and die honourably, and it all ends up being uplifting somehow, despite the gore, as the one warm-hearted old campaigner (Jinlip) emerges from the carnage with his humanity unscathed, and the princess stands alone, a chastened and broken-hearted young girl. I think I'm going to cry ...