Review: "Bichunmoo" is a wire-fu swordplay movie produced by South Koreans. Something seems wrong in the last sentence, but it's okay, I also felt the same way when I have heard about "Bichunmoo" for the first time. But after that I had been hyped by the trailer, I really wanted to see this movie. A wire-fu swordplay movie not produced by a Hong Kong or American company sounded like a silly project, but "Bichunmoo" is far from being a crappy imitation of other classics of its genre. Based on a Korean comic book, the movie didn't have a big success in South Korea when it was released; a lot of bad comments have been made about its incoherent story and bad acting. But I never had the chance to see or read the comic on what the movie was based on so I cant really compare it to its main roots and I also don't speak or understand Korean so I can't tell you if what the actors are really saying sound stupid or not. But I know enough about Asian cinema to tell you where "Bichunmoo" fails, but also how good in general this movie really is.

The plot, which sound a little like a Romeo and Juliet romance story, full of melo-dramatic scenes mixed with fantasy swordplay fighting all along the movie. "Bichunmoo's" strongest value is not in the story that's for sure. First of all, the movie is cut and edited from its initial version. That is the theatrical release! I don't know by how long exactly but long enough to make the story confusing and unclear. The story jumped too often a lot and it was very unclear what exactly happened to the characters during these time periods. There was also a lot of drama included in the story, the whole story is very depressing, not in a boring way but because there no real joyful moments during the movie. All that arrives to the character is always deception, death, forced separation or something that would make you cry, or at least try. I don't have too much problem with that kind of story but I think that they tried to make us feel sad for the characters too soon in the story, we didn't really had the time to really know and fully understand the characters that something sad was happening to them. It's pretty much like this throughout the whole film. So be ready…

A comment that I had heard a lot of time before watching the movie was that the acting was very poor in the movie. In my opinion, I don't think any of the actors in the movie would win an Oscar for their performance but I have seen worst than that before. I can't speak or understand Korean but I found that all the actors looked professional and convincing in their respective role. The character design was also surprisingly very good; I really liked those old costumes and specially the 10 black swordsmen who followed the character of Jinha. It is really too bad that there was no background at all about these 10 mysterious men because they are the biggest surprise of the whole movie. As for the main couple, they were both excellent and really tried all they could to let the audience feel their emotions.

Action wise, this movie has a lot to offer to those who like wire-fu swordplay movie, there are a lot of excellent fight scenes all along the movie, with a spectacular finale with one against 20 bad guys. The only complain that I have about the fights scenes is how they were filmed and edited, because most of the time they really look confusing. The director really tried to give a stylish look to the movie, and it looked very well on some scenes but it was sometimes very poor during the fights. Too much movement in the camera, too much close up to the action and too many cuts during a single fight, most of these problems could have been avoided, but I think that Koreans are still not up to the standard of Hong Kong action movies, but they are not really far behind either. Surprisingly, the action scenes were directed by a Hong Kong director, but anyway, at least it was a very good attempt in general, better than what I saw from American movies so far and I hope that they will learn more for their next wire-fu genre movies.

The soundtrack, surprisingly, was very unique. Instead of using conventional harmonic music like we are used to heard in these kind of epic romance/action movies, the soundtrack was more rock-heavy-metal. It might seem weird but I found that it really fitted the action scenes and the whole movie very well.