FilmNerd3

Style Over Substance

Posted by: ThirteenDamnDollars, September 15, 2005 12:41 AM

Lee Myung-se
Tuesday September 13, 9:00PM
Paramount

Stunning! A visual master piece! A re-invention of the swordplay genre! A lavish, stylish tour-de-force! These are all phrases I'm sure Lee Myung-se would like applied to The Duelist. Sadly, it is none of those things.

This is a swordplay movie without much sword play, a political thriller without much politics or thrills and a romance without much romance.

This movie is all flash, fancy edits and CGI reconstructed scenes made to look like manga panels. All this noise detracts from the story rather than serving it, muddling the story and annoying the audience.

I am being harsh on this movie and director simply because it had so much potential. The grizzled and weary police seargent and his adopted-daughter protegee. The mysterious mystically powerful swordsman. The corrupt government official. The marketplace. The lush palace. Ninja! NINJA! How can a movie with ninja fall so short of the mark?

Beautifully choreographed duels that only strengthen their mutual feelings

Posted by: Task, September 14, 2005 02:38 PM

Tuesday, September 13 9:00 PM PARAMOUNT 2

Never before have I been so completely and utterly disappointed by a movie.

My first warning was that this film is in the Visions category. I think the whole Visions category is only allowed to have one or two good movies, and Brothers Of The Head and The Wayward Cloud are likely to be it. Every year the 'fest tries to teach me to be extremely wary of Visions films, and every year I fail to learn. Next year, film fest! Next year!

The second warning was that the director himself said that "the critics loved this movie, the audiences where half and half". At the time I was all with the "what? that doesn't make sense...". By now you're probably thinking that I found great problems with the movie or something. That's not it. Let me explain...

The artistic style of the movie is magnificent. The use of colour and shadow and camera angles and just everything shows great technical capability. The whole movie can almost be thought of as the director saying "Look how awesome my choreographer is! Look!". Then we look at the cast, definitely all capable actors in good roles. The movie is mostly from the perspective of the local cops, the fiery knife girl Namsoon who leads the team and her self-abasing mentor who is now of lower rank than her. These two (and a fair number of nameless supporting cops) support the rule of the king and his laws. Then there's the opposition, the clever mastermind of a nefarious plot to destroy the country and the skillful but silent duelist who he raised as his son. In the course of unravelling this plot, Namsoon and the duelist fall in love. There's a climactic battle at the end and the story wraps up neatly. Sounds great, doesn't it? Well, this movie is living proof that even if you use all the correct ingredients you can still make an awful movie.

What this movie is is an enormous tease on film. It's a bit of a love story, but the two of them hardly exchange a meaninful sentence and they never even touch. It's a bit of a martial arts movie, but all the fights scenes... They're not fight scenes. They're more like "dances with swords". It's a bad thing when a films saving grace is that it doesn't have Kevin Costner, right? There are great battles, and people die, but death is shown by waving red silk around and you never see a single actual injury. Not one. You see the dead bodies, but there's nothing there to have caused their death. It's like Drama 101 where everyone lies down on the ground and plays dead. It's sometimes an action movie, but those critical bits of action that you want to see? Not there. They freeze-frame right before the good bits, and go from there right into a freeze-frame of the result of that bit of action, and with this "before and after action sequence" you're expected to just fill in the blanks yourself.

Now each of these things is kind of clever and artistic, I definitely like the concept of exploring these techniques, but the movie as a whole is completely unfulfilling. So if you're the kind of person that enjoys 0 calorie chocolate and stuff like that, then this is your kind of movie. Action with no action, romance with no romance, war with no injury or death. A movie with no movie. As for me, I'm staying far away from this film and anything like it for as long as possible.

Ick.