More Action from 불꽃처럼 나비처럼 (The Sword with No Name)

It's hard to base first impressions on a two minute "3 minute highlight," which really has only one odd minute of new footage, but Kim Yong-Gyun's 불꽃처럼 나비처럼 (The Sword with No Name) kind of oozes 신기전 (The Divine Weapon) vibes: lots of money spent on the visuals and action, little less on script and proper casting. Now, Jo Seung-Woo is a very talented actor and so is Soo Ae, but sageuk is pretty much the most demanding, ruthless genre in Chungmuro's cinematic food chain. And the first few lines the two utter in the new highlight package.... are pretty brutal, both in terms of dialogue and delivery. So it's either a case of choosing the worst possible scene, or maybe we can just start worrying.

Nevertheless, the action looks pretty good, as shown by a few more additional bits here, although it still seems a bit too wuxia-oriented for the realism-obsessed average Korean moviegoer. And of course even only remotely expecting something approaching historical relevance will be akin to looking for Starbucks in the Gobi Desert. The idea we're dealing with quite the decent director still stands, but the longer the footage shown, the closer to the bottom expectations fall. Release is set for September 24.