Adrenaline-pumping contemporary urban martial arts eye-candy from Korea, as a bullied young cop discovers he is actually a secret ch'i master.
With a slam-bang visual style that's every bit as exciting and hyper-kinetic as the movie's gravity-defying martial arts sequences, Arahan is action cinema as pure adrenaline rush yet the film is also quite clever and funny, lending it a degree of warmth and wit that elevates it above similar turbo-charged genre offerings. Director Ryoo Seung-wan always finds the humor within the film's non-stop barrage of impressive action setpieces, and this gives Arahan an additional layer of charm amidst the admittedly stellar fights and special effects on display. Bullied and frustrated Seoul beat cop Sang-hwan falls for the beautiful, mysterious Eui-jin, who seems to possess extraordinary martial arts abilities. Soon Eui-jin's mentors, the elderly Seven Masters, inform Sang-hwan that he too is actually a destined ch'i master with hidden abilities that can be brought out through training. Partially to get closer to Eui-jin, Sang-hwan takes up training with them and, after initial setbacks, he soon finds himself able to leap great heights, shoot ch'i energy from his palms, and perform other astonishing feats that confirm his position as a new master . . . and just in time, as a renegade exiled master has returned to wreak evil havoc unless Sang-hwan and Eui-jin can stop him. Old-school purists be damned: Arahan is a wirework and CGI effects spectacle all the way, but the results are exhilarating fun. Asiaphile critic Tony Rayns compared director Ryoo's style on Arahan to Evil Dead-turned-Spiderman auteur Sam Raimi, and the analogy is apt: both keep the action moving at breakneck speed, and both are driven to deliver maximum entertainment for your moviegoing buck. (Korean with English subtitles) -- Travis Crawford
a big bag of meh. cool fighting. cliche plot. koreans yelling at each other. 6.4/10.0.
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