Le règne par le sabre

"Shadowless Sword" was one of my favorite wuxia movies in the past 2 years. It has creative ideas (see the fight scene under water!), a great couple of heroes (beautiful So-yi Yoon from "Arahan" and Seo-jin Lee), and its simple principle "keep them on the run" avoids tedious moments. The movie takes us into 10th century Korea. After all possible heirs to the throne have been murdered, the warrioress Soha (So-yi Yoon) must bring the last surviving prince Jeong-hyeon (Seo-jin Lee) to the throne. He'd prefer an anonymous life under cover, though. But since enemies are already knocking at the door, he has no choice but trust the girl, follow her and run for his life...

Action packed, maybe not quite as stylish as "Hero" but still good looking, and occasionally with good dialog (for example when the prince wonders if he'd make a good king, he never had to think about that before), "Shadowless Sword" is enjoyable throughout.

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!

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...

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")

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!