HIFF Review: The Divine Weapon
“The Divine Weapon” trailer from HanCinema, via Revver.
I’m not the only one from the Star-Bulletin attending the Louis Vuitton Hawaii International Film Festival this year.
Fellow entertainment reporter John Berger went to the opening night screening of “The Divine Weapon,” a Korean action flick that reminds me of Japanese samurai movies after watching the trailer.
You can read John’s take on it after the jump.
“The Divine Weapon” (2008)
South Korea, 132 minutes
Reviewer’s rating: Three stars
Review by John Berger
jberger@starbulletin.com
The survival of Korea as a free nation hangs in the balance as an inventor’s daughter and a self-centered merchant race against time to develop a secret super-weapon in this year’s HIFF opening night blockbuster, “The Divine Weapon.”
Han Eung-jeong is Hong-ri, the inventor’s daughter. Jeong Jae-jeong is the merchant, Seol-ju, who is also a martial arts expert who also knows how to make gunpowder and who also has a secret link to the government of King Sejong and the king’s most trust-worthy general.
Hong-ri must recreate the precise specifications of her late father’s weapons designs without recourse to his plans and diagrams (which were captured by Chinese spies) while Seol-ju and his partners acquire sufficient amounts of the raw materials needed to make a large quantity of gunpowder without being captured by the Chinese or leading them to the compound where the weapons are being made and tested.
Koreans probably know more or less how this historical drama ends – but maybe not the specific fates of Hong-ri and Seol-ju, because the screenplay apparently takes the same sort of liberties that are found in “The Duchess” (The real-life Duke of Devonshire was only nine years older than his wife rather than being the “older man” seen in that movie, and the “divine weapons” were actually developed several decades before the reign of King Sejong rather than during his reign as shown here).
History aside, Americans will get drawn into the basic questions of whether Hong-ri and Seol-ju will ever hook up while working together, whether one or both of them will die tragically, and how long it will be before the arrogant Ming and their horde of barbarian allies are wiped out almost to the last man by the Koreans’ weapons of mass destruction.
The biggest problem with director Kim Yoo-jin’s ambitious historical drama/romance/martial arts film is that it doesn’t fully commit to any of those three genres.
The glacial development of the romantic subplot may be realistic, but Seol-ju’s prowess in almost single-handedly battling hordes of Chinese soldiers in several scenes exceeds “real-life” believability, while the editing of the fight scenes – most of which take place at night – is so choppy that there is very little sense of his skill. On the other hand, with the exception of a scene where two members of his group shoot a “ladder” of arrows into a tree so that he can escape the Ming soldiers, there is no kung-fu film “fighting on the ceiling” fantasy stuff either.
Aside from the suspense factor involved in waiting to see if Hong-ri and Seol-ju will survive, the film’s strongest suit is giving American audiences a sense of life in 15th century Korea when the kingdom existed in the shadow of the Ming Empire.
“The Divine Weapon” contains no on-camera nudity, no sex scenes, a moderate amount of graphic violence, and a moderate amount of crude Korean vocabulary. “The Divine Weapon” does not have an American rating but would probably be rated PG-13.
I give it three-stars.
