Bichunmoo (2000)
Kim Young-jun
Korea
118 min, color, Korean (English subtitles)
Review © 2001 Branislav L. Slantchev
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The story is fairly conventional for this sort of period film. Jinha (Shin Hyun-june) and Sullie (Kim Hee-sun) are childhood friends who fall deeply in love and hence become ordained to cinematic doom. Tragedy strikes when Sullie's father, the Mongolian general Taruga takes her away and forces her to marry (out of political and presumably financial considerations) into the powerful Han family of Namgung. This is the multicultural element for Yu Jinha is Korean, Sullie is half-Mongolian, and Namgung Juanguang is Han Chinese. Love transcends all boundaries, etc. etc.
As any respectable rich family, both Namgung and Taruga have lots of creaking skeletons in their closets, one of which unfortunately involves murdering Jinha's family years ago. The avowed purpose of the slayings was to secure possession of the celebrated Bichun secret martial art, which Jinha masters from a former bodyguard of his father's posing as his uncle. Said uncle manages to expire swearing the confused Jinha to vengeance but without telling him who he has to kill to satisfy the ghosts of his dead relatives. This has all the trappings of a great story but it unravels within few minutes when Jinha learns the identity of the murderers almost simultaneously with finding out about the coming marriage of Sullie. Of course, Sullie is faithful to him and they try to elope but are caught and Jinha is forced to fight Namgung, who treacherously has him ambushed during the duel. The last we see of Jinha for the next thirty seconds is he tumbling off a cliff into the ocean bristling with arrows like a hedgehog.
Inexplicably, Sullie decides to accept the marriage proposal and as she tries on various wedding gowns, the miraculously rescued Jinha recovers in a cave. Ten years later (!?), Jinha returns as the anti-Mongolian fighter Jahalang and finds that Sullie has a son, Suan, which pisses him mightily off. Under the pretense of patriotism, Jahalang and his band of ten thugs (all dressed in incredibly stylish blackware) burst upon the Namgung mansion and exterminate all servants and passers-by; only Sullie and her son remain. They soon try to make their escape but Sullie is wounded in the process although Suan manages to flee only to be caught by Jinha who takes him to his friend in the cave and thus rescues him from the racist anti-Mongolians.
We are then told that Suan is really Jinha's son (which is why Sullie chose not to die) but neither we nor Jinha believe that sop. We should have, for it turns out to be true and then everyone dies an unhappy death. (That's because even the Jinha's new benefactors are after the Bichun secrets and so they try to assassinate him.) The end.
I feel divided by the acting. On one hand, Shin's over-the-top performance was unnerving. The fact that he is a popular Korean soap opera actor is betrayed by his portrayal of any emotion, in which depth is invariably characterized by a lot of shaking. Everything trembles: hands, face, hair, body, and even camera. On the other hand, Kim Hee-sun's Sullie is incredible for she manages to convey a charming mix of subtlety, fleetness, and strength that reminded me of Joey Wang's ghost. She won't be winning any awards for acting, but her surreal beauty carried the day for this reviewer. The rest of the cast are completely forgettable.
The cinematography also has me scratching my head. It was lush in a very epic sort of way but at the same time the fast cutting and the overuse of wide angle lenses made the film look like a Hong Kong knock-off (which it is). There is a lot of attention paid to swordplay and the pacing is off. As usual, the characters suffocate under the avalanche of action: there is not enough time to develop anyone of importance. I can't help but feel that had Kim Young-jun cut about a third of the fight sequences in favor of dramatization, the results would have been far more satisfying.
Having said all this, I still think that BICHUNMOO is worth seeing. It is most certainly a must for any aficionado of well-done wire-fu. People who liked CROUCHING TIGER may or may not like it, depending on their tolerance for fighting (which is both far more extensive than CTHD and bloodier, with bodies torn apart, limbs cut off, and blood dripping off steel in a seductive manner). The score won't win any fans but Kim Hee-sun definitely will.
The Deltamac DVD. Where do I begin? IT IS FULL-FRAME! Yes, these incompetent bastards have done the unforgivable: they'd sliced the film from its widescreen presentation and I was stuck watching barely two-thirds of what was filmed. This is unacceptable. Who, the hell, wants DVDs with a modified feature? Had I known about this atrocity beforehand, I would never have ordered this DVD but would have waited for the (overpriced) US edition by Tai Seng, which I hear will have the correct format.
The transfer is not inspiring. It is better than VCD but it is not up to DVD standards, although it is not nearly as bad as many HK DVDs. The problem is mainly with half-assed compression but there is also some instability in the picture, which combines with Shin's almost constant shaking in a very annoying way. I would say that the quality is somewhere around the usual stuff from Universe.
The Korean 5.1 track is not too bad (there is a DTS track, which I did not check out) but there are some drops in the music. The subtitles are bright and easy to read and the translation is fine, so no complaints here. (That is, except the annoyance of them failing to translate a key scene near the end of the film.) There are also bonus features, like a Making Of featurette (not translated and in Chinese), two MTV music videos (Korean/Cantonese), and the trailer, all in awful quality and looking as if taped from a bad VHS source. Again, I would not buy the DVD again. I will have to replace it soon.
July 13, 2001. BLS