Le règne par le sabre

Well, what can I say -- great movie. The comparison to House of Flying Daggers of course is inevitable ;-) Shadowless Sword is more humorous (but not comedy-fun), there is a bit of adventure theme, the story is simpler (so there is less who-is-who guessing), and has two dazzling beautiful (!) women as leading characters. I almost would say I like Shadowless Sword more if only director didn't made special effects awkward.

Maybe it is just me, but I expect that after hitting objects can explode, but not after cutting. And here some objects fall apart (with great speed and energy) what looks amazing (with proper music) but some... explode, which is not funny, not spectacular, not magical, not mysterious -- it is simply bizarre. It is so out-of-place that it spoils every fight scene when director decided to put explosion after sword cut. Pity...

First thing first: "Shadowless Sword" doesn't have much of a plot. Nothing much happens, which is pretty ridiculous considering it is a 2 hour movie. Basically, you could describe it as one long trek/chase sequence, periodically interrupted by the fight scenes, a la "Ice Age 2: The Meltdown" or the 2nd half of "The Island".

Having said that, the fight scenes are the main point of this movie, right? It is rare to see something new or original in martial arts movies, but here the filmmakers have a great eye for visually interesting fights. The backgrounds are gorgeous, and contribute a lot to the fights themselves. For instance, a lot of stuff breaks: pillars, tiles, and other objects all explode violently from destructive weapon swinging (think of the "Matrix" lobby scene but with swords instead of bullets). Roofs are there to enable aerial battle, and even being submersed underwater can't stop the sword fight from continuing!

Now I'll start off by saying that there is no reason to compare this movie to the Asian blockbusters such as Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon or Hero etc. It doesn't matter if you've seen them or not because I think this movie has it's own atmosphere and feel to it. I guess it's because this film is Korean. There is a distinct difference between Korean and other Asian action movies. They have their own style of making these fantastic action/epic/drama movies. Another great Korean movie in the same veins is Musa The Warrior, so if you've seen it you have some idea what to expect. Some other comment stated that there are some weird comedic features in the fight scenes, but I wouldn't point that out in the review. It was only one short scene and that's all she wrote. On the contrary I found this movie to be quite serious in the whole. Though everyone would say there wasn't much of a plot I answer; There is an adequate plot to carry this movie without a problem, it is after all made for entertaining purposes, not for the Oscar nomination.

Now more about the movie. The fighting is mostly sword-fighting. There are a few more exotic arms with some of the fighters too like bows or poles. The fights were made watcher friendly in a way that you can actually see what is happening in the fights all the time. So it's not just a clinging sound and a million swordstrikes per second where you can't tell which sword belongs to who. So you can see every small detail in the fights which is in my opinion definitely a good thing. And yes, there is a lot of flying in the movie, but used much more tastefully than for example in Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. The fight choreography in general was amazing. Saw many moves that I hadn't seen before in similar films. The actors were good, especially the leading actress was very convincing. When I watched this film, I had been bored out of my mind all day and was about to fall to sleep. NOT after the movie started rolling. I was glued to my seat from start to end. Summary: Good action and choreography, good acting and very, very entertaining.

I saw an extended version of 116 minutes (apparently there is a 104 minute version as well).

First off, the title makes you expect something else. I expected this "Shadowless Sword" to play some pivotal role, but no show. This film should better be named "Back to Balhae" or something, because that's what it's all about: a trek to Balhae. The storyline is pretty thin, but a martial arts movie with an original and strong story is a rare thing, so you shouldn't be too surprised about that.

Technically this movie is very beautifully shot, with excellent art direction and costumes. The stuff on screen really is exquisite and should satisfy costume-aficionados and the artists among us. The actors do a good job too, no overacting or amateurish stuff, but at times over-directed it seems. The two main actresses are very pretty, so very nice to look at. Clearly intended to attract the mainly male target-audience, I guess. No ugly women to be seen, not even with the extras. The fighting scenes are very enjoyable, but they miss the rawness and directness seen in HongKong martial arts movies. And unfortunately some stuff badly copied from Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. And overall the pace of the movie was excruciatingly slow. I hope the director and editors will learn that even pretty shots shown too long do get boring.

So bottom line: Don't get me wrong, it IS a rather enjoyable movie, no question about that. But you'll forget in a week or two. Good shot by the Koreans at the Wuxia genre though. Keep 'em coming!

I'm not good with remembering words that describe a fight style, but I found the word I was looking for here on IMDb at another review "Wuxia"! This style involves people fighting with swords (hence the English or at least a better understanding of the movie title "Shadowless Sword"!

I liked this movie not only because of the fight scenes (that's never enough to give a movie a really high rating), but also because of the characters. Although I'm aware of the fact that this is not MUSA (which was genius in my eyes), this still holds up very good and is worth a watch, if you don't hate Wuxia movies at least! ;o) (after you watch the movie, you can read the review from a fellow here at IMDb "Yagyu_Tajima")