A Espada sem Sombra

"Shadowless Sword" was one of my favorite wuxia movies in the past 2 years. It has creative ideas (see the fight scene under water!), a great couple of heroes (beautiful So-yi Yoon from "Arahan" and Seo-jin Lee), and its simple principle "keep them on the run" avoids tedious moments. The movie takes us into 10th century Korea. After all possible heirs to the throne have been murdered, the warrioress Soha (So-yi Yoon) must bring the last surviving prince Jeong-hyeon (Seo-jin Lee) to the throne. He'd prefer an anonymous life under cover, though. But since enemies are already knocking at the door, he has no choice but trust the girl, follow her and run for his life...

Action packed, maybe not quite as stylish as "Hero" but still good looking, and occasionally with good dialog (for example when the prince wonders if he'd make a good king, he never had to think about that before), "Shadowless Sword" is enjoyable throughout.

Sometimes, films are just about color and movement- action and thrills. SHADOWLESS SWORD will not change your life, it won't make you think about the meaning of existence- but if you enjoy great fights and gorgeous actresses- then this film is for you ! Yun Soy is wonderful as the cool headed bodyguard - a much better role for her than ARAHAN- whilst she is beautiful, I found her to be very convincing in this film. So sit back , relax and just be entertained by the two lead actresses, the ultra cool underwater fight scene and the superb fight with the long mace inside the hut .

Three words can easily describe this film- FIGHTS, FEMMES and FUN !!

Well, what can I say -- great movie. The comparison to House of Flying Daggers of course is inevitable ;-) Shadowless Sword is more humorous (but not comedy-fun), there is a bit of adventure theme, the story is simpler (so there is less who-is-who guessing), and has two dazzling beautiful (!) women as leading characters. I almost would say I like Shadowless Sword more if only director didn't made special effects awkward.

Maybe it is just me, but I expect that after hitting objects can explode, but not after cutting. And here some objects fall apart (with great speed and energy) what looks amazing (with proper music) but some... explode, which is not funny, not spectacular, not magical, not mysterious -- it is simply bizarre. It is so out-of-place that it spoils every fight scene when director decided to put explosion after sword cut. Pity...

I'm not good with remembering words that describe a fight style, but I found the word I was looking for here on IMDb at another review "Wuxia"! This style involves people fighting with swords (hence the English or at least a better understanding of the movie title "Shadowless Sword"!

I liked this movie not only because of the fight scenes (that's never enough to give a movie a really high rating), but also because of the characters. Although I'm aware of the fact that this is not MUSA (which was genius in my eyes), this still holds up very good and is worth a watch, if you don't hate Wuxia movies at least! ;o) (after you watch the movie, you can read the review from a fellow here at IMDb "Yagyu_Tajima")

Now I'll start off by saying that there is no reason to compare this movie to the Asian blockbusters such as Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon or Hero etc. It doesn't matter if you've seen them or not because I think this movie has it's own atmosphere and feel to it. I guess it's because this film is Korean. There is a distinct difference between Korean and other Asian action movies. They have their own style of making these fantastic action/epic/drama movies. Another great Korean movie in the same veins is Musa The Warrior, so if you've seen it you have some idea what to expect. Some other comment stated that there are some weird comedic features in the fight scenes, but I wouldn't point that out in the review. It was only one short scene and that's all she wrote. On the contrary I found this movie to be quite serious in the whole. Though everyone would say there wasn't much of a plot I answer; There is an adequate plot to carry this movie without a problem, it is after all made for entertaining purposes, not for the Oscar nomination.

Now more about the movie. The fighting is mostly sword-fighting. There are a few more exotic arms with some of the fighters too like bows or poles. The fights were made watcher friendly in a way that you can actually see what is happening in the fights all the time. So it's not just a clinging sound and a million swordstrikes per second where you can't tell which sword belongs to who. So you can see every small detail in the fights which is in my opinion definitely a good thing. And yes, there is a lot of flying in the movie, but used much more tastefully than for example in Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. The fight choreography in general was amazing. Saw many moves that I hadn't seen before in similar films. The actors were good, especially the leading actress was very convincing. When I watched this film, I had been bored out of my mind all day and was about to fall to sleep. NOT after the movie started rolling. I was glued to my seat from start to end. Summary: Good action and choreography, good acting and very, very entertaining.