I have no idea what they're saying, but it sounds important.
I SHOT AN ARROW IN THE AIR...
THE DIVINE WEAPON-HIFF'S OPENING NIGHT FILM
by Albert Lanier
597,793. That's the number of people in Korea who reportedly paid hard-earned Won to see the "historical" action flick THE DIVINE WEAPON ( aka SINGIJEON) when it first screened in South Korea this past September.
In fact, DIVINE WEAPON beat out the musical MAMMA MIA at the box office during the the days of September 12-14.
On the one hand, I get a sense of giddy satisfaction out of this fact since I steadfastly refused to see MAMMA MIA when I was on vacation in San Francisco this summer ( Since when does a slew of ABBA songs lip synced by Meryl Streep while frolicking in Greece qualify as anything remotely approaching entertainment?).
On the other hand, THE DIVINE WEAPON sucks.
I am tempted to end my review there but since THE DIVINE WEAPON screened as the opening night film of this year's 28th annual Hawaii International Film Festival on Thursday, October 9th and since some of you idiot talkbackers might very well complain ( and we wouldn't want that, would we?), I soldier on.
THE DIVINE WEAPON takes place during the reign of the Joseon Dynasty in Korea (the HIFF program says 1448 but I will leave the amateur historians out there to quibble with the dates and details of this film). The Chinese Ming Dynasty has chastised the King of Korea and the nation itself for insolence. Clearly, the Ming Dynasty sees Korea as a threat.
Merchant Seol-Joo and his band of peddlers are looking to trade and make money off the Ming so the the fact that envoys from the Ming didn't stay to trade put the kibosh on potential profits.
Into Seol-Joo's life comes a attractive lady, Hong- Ri. Seol-Joo is asked to harbor Hong-Ri and he agrees. It turns out that Hong-Ri isn't just some pretty young thing, she possesses the knowledge to build a powerful weapon, a divine weapon, the weapon that's in the script: the Singijeon.
Class, say it with me now, What is the Singijeon?
For those of you who don't wish to know, I guess I should warn you that this is SPOILER time. So don't read further.
For the rest of you who either haven't seen this movie on a bootleg DVD or watched it in theaters in South Korea, the Singijeon is essentially an embryonic form of proto-fireworks: arrows with a flask in the middle loaded with gunpowder which is composed of sulfur, charcoal and saltpeter. The gunpowder must loaded into the flask-hopefully carefully-and then attached to arrows.These are loaded onto a wooden rack with numerous holes for the arrows. The fuse is lit and the arrows launch into the sky and voila! A divine weapon!
It turns out that Hong-Ri's father was the creative scientific genius behind this weapon but when his house and lab are attacked by troops from the Ming, he forces his daughter to escape with enough plans to build the weapon while he rigs a primitive form of explosives to his chest and blows himself to kingdom come.
The problem is that the actual Singijeon manual is in the hands of the Ming officials in Korea and their scientific experts are impressed, too impressed in fact because they don't think the measurements for loading the gunpowder, getting the right charge, even building essentially artillery and missile-like prototypes is feasible.
Of course, the Ming turns up the pressure by demanding a couple thousand young Korean maidens and more than a thousand eunuchs and then ratchets it up even further by building an 100,000 man army and sending it into Korea thus leading up to the film's big climactic showdown.
By this time, not only was I uninterested, I was fighting sleep.THE DIVINE WEAPON is an uninspired piece of hack work perhaps with a slightly higher budget than your average Korean hack film.
The director Kim Yoo-Jin directs the film with about as much passion as an eunuch. The standard array of shots are used including the requisite establishing crane shot that peers bird-like over houses and same-old-shot selection for sword fights: medium shot, overhead shot, close-up shot, I need-to-drink-a- shot.
Kim does a better job with his cast. He gets some mileage from his lead actors. Jeong Jae-Yeong actually turns a good performance as the profit-minded Seol-Joo who enjoys drinking and chasing courtesans and is-surprise, surprise-good with a sword (except for the drinking part, this is a man after my own heart). Jeong plays Seol-Joo as a fiscal pragmatist who reluctantly makes gunpowder (a skill passed down in his family) for the Singijeon.
Han Eun-Jeong likewise turns in decent work as Hong-Ri, a seemingly demure woman who is fired up about patriotically helping the Korean nation. Her spunk and drive are convincingly portrayed by Han who holds her own with Jeong during their scenes together.
However, Jeong and Han are set adrift in a lackluster script that marches forward and promotes an essentially nationalistic agenda as it progresses plot point by plot point, beat by beat. The script features the usual gallery of villains, heroes and anti-heroes all about as transparent as a model in a thong bikini.
Maybe it was because I had an interview with Mayor of Honolulu for a local newspaper earlier in the day, maybe because I had enjoyed the Festival's opening night party at the Halekulani Hotel in Waikiki held before the film screened a little too much, maybe because I was just damn tired that day, I don't know but THE DIVINE WEAPON doesn't work. It's the kind of simpleminded, crowd-pleasing crap that always annoys me.
Now, if I can only perfect a weapon to destroy films like this. Okay, maybe,a touch of the sardonic, a few pinches of cynicism and a generous helping of wit and intelligence.
Now, that is a divine weapon.
END
