The Sword With No Name

The Sword With No Name will be screening for free on Tuesday, June 15th at 7PM as part of Korean Movie Night, courtesy of the Korean Cultural Service, Subway Cinema, and Tribeca Cinemas at 54 Varick Street, on the corner of Canal Street, one block from the A, C, E and 1 train Canal Street stops. You can find out more about their lineup at www.subwaycinemanews.com.

I'm conflicted about director Yong-Gyun Kim's romantic action film, The Sword With No Name because it feels like it's attempting to be two movies: a movie that I'd seen quite a few times and became impatient with earlier on and another that I'd never seen before and wanted to see more of. The former is the epic, patriotic action movie with grand, zooming camera moves, extensive CG, and improbable combat done in slow motion. The latter movie, the one that I found interesting, was about a queen attempting to drag her kingdom into the looming 20th century, and the strength within her to resist the commons instinct of isolation and patriotism to connect Korea to the outside world.

These two movies are actually represented by two characters - one the titular sword (Seung-Woo Cho) who meets and falls in love with the young queen (Su-Ae) on the eve of her coronation. He's living an aimless life, still feeling guilty for being unable to save his mother when Catholics were being purged earlier in the century. She's anxious about becoming the most powerful woman in the country. By the sea, they become fast friends and later, he resists a commission to assassinate her. He gives her the strength to become queen and protecting her gives his life purpose.

Not bad so far?

Later, the queen meets with the wives of Western diplomats and learns about chocolate, takes on a French tutor, and forms an alliance with Russia. He gets into a tiff with the leader of the palace guards, joins the army, and has a wire-fu fight in front of one of the more garish CG backdrops I've seen in a while.

The general outline of the movie follows the story of Empress Myeonseong, a popular national figure in Korea. As played by Su-Ae she's curious, thoughtful, beautiful, and kind. There's a whiff of hagiography there but we all often have a tough time speaking ill of our patriots. She's in the movie that I liked and wanted more of, navigating palace intrigues and attempting to create a future for her country. There's a deft touch in these scenes which hold the threat of danger for the young queen at every turn. There's a beautiful scene where she must ignore a personal tragedy to help usher in the use of electricity in the court.

Then two swordsman in a brawl crash the event - this feel apropos, given the rhythm of the rest of the movie. It frequently cranks up these action beats, making them almost unbearable. Unfortunately, it's not the intensity of the action that increases, just the camera moves, CG, and slo-mo. "Who cares," I asked during these scenes?

On the issue of patriotism: this is another action epic with cartoonishly broad, evil foreigners (in this case, the Japanese). The Koreans and Chinese of that era were rightly angry at brutal Japanese expansionism. Unfortunately, when they're made such mustache-twirling villains as they are here, it diminishes the impact of their actions.

The movie does what it has to with these scenes, and I don't hold it against the film that it wants to be an action movie. Still, I encourage you to read an official bio of the queen - isn't that a much more interesting set of events than a few CG puppets wailing on each other?