Hae-jeok: Ba-da-ro gan san-jeok (2014)

Hae-jeok: Ba-da-ro gan san-jeok: Directed by Seok-hoon Lee. With Nam-gil Kim, Son Ye-jin, Hae-Jin Yoo, Lee Kyung-young. A band of pirates and a group of bandits fight to catch a gray whale that has swallowed a royal stamp.

“I wonu0026#39;t add anything to the material Dare Devil Kid has already stated as I agree wholeheartedly with him. I will however look at this film from the point of view of a kung fu fan. (and why is there no category on IMDb for kung fu / martial arts? ) As an entry in the genre of martial arts oriental film making faithful to the traditions of Wong Fei-Hung and such classics as Project A, Pirates walks tall and proud and has no apologies to make. The timing and mixture of love, honour, tradition, comedy and drama are perfect throughout. These by the way make up the elements in the complex and near impossible to explain within the word limit here, concept of u0026quot;faceu0026quot;. As well, the sword work and fighting skills are nearly as good as anything Jet Li or Jackie Chan would be impressed with. Speaking of sword work, there is a lot of it and never comes off as anything but intense or bloody dangerous to the actors should they make a mistake. Based on the fight sequences and rope tricks alone, I would watch more of anything starring these guys.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eHaving seen more hours of this kind of film from China over the years, Iu0026#39;m surprised I hadnu0026#39;t ventured into the Korean historic martial arts scene earlier. J pop may be both alien and compelling to me but this genre is like walking into a room full of 80u0026#39;s Shaw Brothers films Iu0026#39;d somehow missed. What a deliciously tasty feast Pirates is to someone like me, it assumes you are familiar with all the significant bits of the culture and story, so donu0026#39;t lumber the film with a lot of klunky exposition as in some films that aspire to being seen at some point in the west. While my Korean is non existent, the easy to read sub titles ( thatu0026#39;s important too ) seem to allow the original scriptu0026#39;s concepts and plot points to come through without the usual over simplification and ham fisted translation into western ideas that haunt many other such films. Most recently I saw a Korean anime that Iu0026#39;m sure was brilliant in the original tongue but was so badly dubbed it went from funny for the first 15 minutes to too painful for my brain to process. Iu0026#39;m sure this may in fact be the principle reason I might have steered clear of the genre till now.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003ePirates deserves better distribution, a proper name in English and as mentioned somewhere else, is an object lesson for anybody considering making a film about pirates. There is more Errol Flynn 1940u0026#39;s fun factor here than the confused drive-by muggings of the Pirates of the Caribbean sequels churned out for the sole purpose of parting gullible people from their money. I will go so far as to suggest that in the event a DVD of this comes available in near the future, fans of martial arts films add this to the must have list.”