Bichunmoo

A movie that covers the gamut of emotions plus great action. This is the best movie I've seen.

In the Yuan Dynasty, the Mongolian Empire with the descendants of Genghis Kan rules China. In this environment, the poor Jinha (Shin Hyun-June) is raised by his uncle that teaches him the secret martial art of the Bichun. The daughter of a concubine of the powerful General Taruga (Hak-cheol Kim), Sullie (Hee-seon Kim), is raised with him and they have a crush on each other. When her mother dies, Sullie's father brings her to the Taruga House and she tells Jinha that she would wait for him. But the general promises her to the powerful Chinese lord Namgung Junkwang (Jin-yeong Jeong) to increase his power with the alliance. When Jinha's uncle is lethally wounded by warriors that want to know the secrets of Bichun, he discloses the Korean royal origins of Jinha. While traveling to meet Sullie, Jimha befriends Junkwang without knowing that he is the man that will marry Sullie. Sooner Jinha is betrayed and almost dies; along the years, he fights against the Mongolian Empire. When he meets Sullie again years later, she discloses a family secret to him.

"Bichunmoo" is a movie with a promising beginning and wonderful art direction, costumes and soundtrack; unfortunately it is also too long, with a confused screenplay, and melodramatic like a soap opera. In a certain moment, the story becomes messy with many betrayals and confused situations and it is hard to the viewer to know who is who. In 2000, "Bichunmoo" was the most expensive Korean movie ever made. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "Bichunmoo, A Saga de um Guerreiro" ("Bichunmoo, the Saga of a Warrior")

This movie does a fairly good job of tying together a bunch of clichéd tragic plots. The action is okay but a bit cheesy. The wire work isn't too ridiculous. It doesn't really have anything to offer martial arts fans. A lot of the fighting is supernatural and the blows don't even connect.

It has some problems with the plot. Every few minutes a character will run off and do something stupid just to make the viewer sad. There is a gap of about 15 years in the middle of the film during which important things happen but the film just continues without explaining them. You never actually find out why all the characters are where and they are and doing what they're doing after this gap.

this film seems to be divided into two parts, the one is the martial arts, political part, which is cool and the other is the love story which is far too sappy.

the plot is simultaneously thin as paper yet so convoluted as to be incomprehensible, starting with the main character's nose. the story runs something along the lines of "Hero comes from ancient dynasty, knows martial arts secrets, and is in love with a forbidden woman. meanwhile said woman is key to labyrinthine politics involving Mongolian warlords, Chinese Warlords, corrupt officials and everything in between." the double crosses go on endlessly, until it's rather tricky to tell who the hell is betraying who. meanwhile the whole tepid "I loved you once but now you're a murderer, No i'm not you betrayed our love" thing drags on.

the fight scenes are fantastically choreographed but poorly shot. characters fly at each other and slash in a graceful sword dance, but the camera tries to match their acrobatics, resulting in an eye hurting riot of movement. the hero's undefeatable signature move (i almost expected him to cry out "Hado-Ken" whenever he uses it) is used way too often, and leaves every fight with a predictable close. it's other problem is that fight scenes are scattered liberally throughout the film, with no correlation between the quality of a fight and its importance, so many of the best fights (an incredible scene as the hero's war band descends on an enemy fort) are used on the most mundane plot points, with average fights for the more important scenes (including a terribly weak climatic fight). the other problem is that since the hero's fighting style is so effective (even without the street fighter style finishing move) that he uses the same moves in every fight, with little to no variation, all the fights end up shockingly repetitive.

meanwhile the hero alternates between a quivering lipped softie, and stony faced mannequin. one of the villains fairs much better, and, annoyingly, wins our sympathy far more effectively than the hero does.

this may sound an unfair blasting of the film, and i wish i could sound more even handed, but the film could seriously have used some comic relief (one joke in two hours is not too much to ask) some editing (way too much sepia toned slow motion) and just some good old fashioned still cameras (ones that didn't back flip with fight scene) my rating 5/10, potential but mostly squandered

The movie strays from the original manhwa, mostly due to time restraints. Therefore some of the characters are barely introduced and their actions seem very random. You should watch the series that came out a few years later that goes into a lot more detail and character development. Still was a good movie though.