Blades flash, costumes dazzle and the wide screen is generally bent out of shape in "Duelist", a South Korean martial artser that's determined to reinvent the genre every which way. "Duelist" is a whirl of movement, a ballet of bloodshed and a candy-colored carnival of clashing characters but it is most definitely not an action movie: it's a romance, it's releasing its audiences divided into warring factions: heart-on-their-sleeve romantics who sob softly, overwhelmed by what they've just seen, and baffled and underwhelmed adrenaline junkies shaking their heads and wanting to know why the action looks so good but leaves their thrill buttons unpressed.
Thrilling action, political intrigue, and forbidden romance all light up the screen in this inventive detective story set during the Choson Dynasty! Director Lee's movies are governed by his dreams. So reject your assumptions, jettison your baggage, and forget every other movie you've ever seen when you walk into "Duelist". There are barely 10 pages of dialogue in the whole film, because Lee isn't happy with his points unless he's written them in sweat and blood, muscle and sinew. Every shift in emotion, mood, and thought is conveyed visually, zapped into your brain via your eyes at 24 frames per second.Kicking off in an enormous marketplace riot, "Duelist" has a sneaky agenda up its sleeve: it wants to break your heart. These guys are engaged in a deadly game, and while the first half of the film puts the focus fully on the "game" part of that phrase, the second half brings home the "deadly" : Namsoon is a young cop in the Joseon Dynasty whose precinct winds up unraveling a knotty counterfeiting case that turns out to be a political plot to destabilize Korea's economy. During the course of her duties, she crosses paths with Sad Eyes, a King of the Vampires-looking henchman for the baddies. He barely says a single word in the entire movie, but gazing out from behind his bangs like an animal peering out through the bars in his cage; he becomes the movie's emotional center. Anyone who's attuned to motion picture cliches will know that Namsoon and Sad Eyes will fall for each other, but they're on opposite sides of the law and everything will end in tragedy. But Lee Myung-se embraces cliches because they give him a place to stand while he deconstructs the world. He likes to pick them up and bang them against the wall until their rust, barnacles, and familiarity falls off like dust and the kernel of what makes them resonate is exposed.
What pulls you through the movie is the movement. Drunk on tango classes and sword lessons. The actors who had trained for the tango as well as martial arts before filming in order to perform the best action scene for the movie showed off their elegant and wonderful acting especially for this action scene.
For the sound score to this romance, it has the elements of classical pieces as well as traditional music. Overall tracks recapture all the excitement and passion in crystal-clear quality.
Addition note, Lee Myung-se won award honor as the best director for "Duelist" in 100 Sang Film Award. Run by the Korean newspaper Hankook Ilbo since 1965.
Important : This is unofficial page dedicates to "Duelist", created for those who appreciate the movie or its soundtrack. I do not affiliate in anyway with the staff.