Korean film at its finest: Musa The Warrior (2001)

You may be asking yourself "Where does Jim find these weird Korean films?" Well the answer to that is simple. We have a local mall that you may have heard about in one of the more famous Russell Peter's comedy sketches, Pacific Mall. Treasures untold lay within, and that's where I found this movie, Musa, years and years ago. I never got a chance to watch it because it's over 2 hours long and rarely did I have the time to devote to a movie in the past. Well all that's changed now, so I sat down, popped in the DVD and fired it up. Did I mention it has the beautiful Ziyi Zhang from Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon and Memoirs of a Geisha? I'll tell you all about this highly historically accurate Korean made Epic right after the jump!



Musa was actually released in English as The Warrior, so if you go looking for it, keep that in mind. Set around 1375, it's about a Korean diplomatic convoy that is attacked when large scale war breaks out in China between the rival Chinese factions, The Ming emprire and the Yuan. On their way they come across a band of Mongols who have kidnapped the Ming Princess and plan on handing her over to the Yuan Emperor. They ambush the Mongols, saving the Princess, and plan to take her back home to clear their names after earlier being mistaken as spies. The rest of the movie is a long journey of constantly being attacked by Mongol search parties and eventually taking refuge in an old fort.

The action in this movie stands far above what I thought I'd find. The cinematography of the large scale fights is fast and full of movement, but not so that you can't tell what's going on. At every moment I knew which characters were doing what, how they were fairing in the battle, who was in trouble and who was saving who. The choreography is also very good, utilizing single handed and double handed swords, spears, and even bow and arrow in the middle of the battles. There's a combination of fighting on foot as well as plenty of cavalry and horseback fights. The effects on the kills were also highly well done, often leaving me wondering how these extras and actors weren't actually being stabbed and shot by arrows.

I was really impressed with the quality of the costumes in Musa too. Everything from weaponry, to armor to basic clothing on peasants looked totally believable. This leads to the generally impressive historical accuracy used in the film. Not only were the costuming and locals near perfect, but even language was taken into consideration. All characters speak the correct languages that they should be speaking.

Speaking of characters, there are a TON of them in this movie. Lots of front line main characters as well as several side characters. All of which get plenty of time for you to get to know them, their situation, their conflicts between each other, and their reasons for doing everything they do. The pure length of the movie clearly is what allows them to accomplish this, but it was certainly worth it. Even in a few spots when a side character was in danger of being killed, I found myself caring about what happened.

Well this article has ended up running quite long, and I still never got to talk about how great the story was, how many character conflicts there were or how varied and complex and often overlapping they ended up being. Tons of action, tons of character development and the giant finale to this movie all add together to make this movie a really good watch.