Memories of the Sword

I loved this movies plot, but it was a little confusing at time how they put the script together and that's party to the style of movies I am use to here in the USA, That's not to say how this movie comes together Especially towards the end. The plot is amazing the Cinematography is beautiful and the sword fighting is on spot. The movie does jump around a little bit and that is what confuses most people but they're trying to give you a sense of the past that leads to the future and they also change characters names from what they started with to what they end up with so that kind of throws you off but like I said the end of the movie brings it all together beautifully I would highly recommend this movie it's got everything one would want like crouching Tiger hidden Dragon.

"Memories" seems to be a key word with this film, as memories are not always complete. Just as memories, so too poetry. A poem doesn't need complete sentences to be understood, it's more about the feelings that are conveyed. When I came to this realization, I enjoyed this film much more.

I guess the advertising for this film made comparisons to Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon? I don't know because I just borrowed this from the library & it wasn't until a couple reviews mentioned it that I heard the comparison. There are similarities, but that is all they are..

Don't focus on that for this film, enjoy it for what it is: a poem in cinematic form.

I wasn't really looking forward to this movie or anything. However when it finally arrived in theaters I decided to give it a try. Sometimes, the movies that I have no interest in ends up surprising me in a good way. However that wasn't the case for this flick, it was super mediocre at best. The plot is jumbled and it didn't seem to know what direction it wanted to go. Some areas build up and goes nowhere. To be honest I wanted to check this movie, not because of the Korean super star two timing manipulative jerk Lee Byung-hun. But because of the actress Kim Go-eun who seems to get better with each film. I was actually impressed with her in "Coin Locker Girl". This movie is a poor man's effort at emulating films like "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon". The acting is good but nothing special that makes it stand out or anything like that. The plot is basically crying, sobbing, getting over melodramatic and between fighting. That basically sums up this mess of a film. I could tell this was suppose to be some Shakespearian stuff, but it fails. Even the action sequences are bland. As a matter of fact the fight sequences in "The Sword With No Name" which came out in 2009 was done much better. The action in this is mashed with choppy, close up, constant in and out mixed with slow-motion. It's a headache to watch, even when it came to the action sequences it's a mess. Except near the end it's when it became bearable to watch. Overall, just watch "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" again.

5/10

This was okay. It was nice looking. It could have stood to have more fighting and less long sequences of sorrow. All the sorrow, which I guess is what the plot revolves around, could have been avoided if everyone involved had made less inexplicably poor decisions.

I just saw another Korean epic called Assassination last week at my local theater so I thought I give this one a shot.

The two movies are similar in their epicness, as they both had great cinematography that made it feel like a painting come to life and they seem to be working a very large story with lots of elements but is not too hard to follow, which is good for me cause subtitles can be too much to read sometimes. The scope of Memories of the Sword was big and long (at two hours and sixteen minutes), and covered a lot of drama.

I don't think I've ever seen Lee Byung-hun, who I know to be a actor from Korea, in a Korean film. He's somewhat a thing in the states, so I assumed that made him a huge star in his native land. It's the first time I did not see him in an action film with his shirt off holding a sword. It's a little misleading for those of us expecting more battle scenes from him, instead he plays more of a dramatic role that evolves romance, which I rarely see in Asian films cause I mostly deal in marshal arts action.

Which the movie does not have a lot of, but the little it does I was very impress with. Overall it was not a bad movie to sit through.