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 aulabi" has all the makings of a TV movie with
some added R-rated footage showing gratuitous violence and bloodletting in order
to justify a theatrical release. The South Korean film, about Korean expatriates
who find themselves on the wrong side of the samurai in feudal Japan, features
some truly awful music that would be too corny even for a soap opera. Also, the
film is so skewed against the Japanese that you wonder why any self-respecting
Japanese actor would voluntarily be a part of the movie.
Meaning "warrior" in Korean, "Saulabi"
follows Korea's master swordsman, Ko Woo-do (Sang Hyun Lee) as he travels to a
Japanese village to forge a sword called the "Heaven's Sword" that,
once completed, is to be brought back to Korea to restore the might of a certain
defeated kingdom. Ko's quest to make the fabled super-duper weapon (it can
supposedly cut through steel) is sidetracked when he becomes attracted to Osame
(Uememya Masako), the daughter of a local Lord who wants her to marry the
province's Samurai Lord. As expected, things get hairy, Ko becomes a target, and
a lot of people get killed rather unconvincingly.
I'm not going to say that "Saulabi" is a bad
movie. It's just not very well thought out and executed. The screenplay by
Hwan-kyeong Lee is so in love with the notion of the saulabi as the warrior
spirit of the Koreans that the word comes up, say, once every other sentence.
There's also an attempt to contrast the saulabi with the samurai, but any
impression that this is an honest comparison goes out the window very quickly.
The film is so biased against the samurai and the Japanese that nearly all the
Japanese men in the film either grunts a lot, laughs maniacally, or has the bad
habit of going around beheading people for no particular reason. The movie
actually reminds me of another South Korean film, "Lost
Memories", which was also very unflattering to the Japanese.
Takaaki Enoki ("Heaven
and Earth") plays Ando, the Samurai Lord who is supposed to marry
Osame. Enoki is supposed to be Japan's best swordsman, but like the film's
portrayal of Ko, supposedly Korea's best swordsman, the two actors look clumsy
holding their respective weapons. How do I know Ando and Ko are supposed to be
their respective country's best swordsman? Because characters in the film keep
reminding us of this fact over and over again. In the end, the movie's
perception of the two men overwhelms the actors' abilities (or lack thereof).
As previously mentioned, one can't shake the feeling that
"Saulabi" was originally a TV movie. It's as if someone realized they
could put the film in theaters, so they went back after production and shot
additional footages in close-up so that way the actors' faces don't have to
appear, thus allowing the usage of cheap extras. The close-ups involve bloody
images like swords entering bodies, etc. I bring this up only because the
violence in the film is shot as tame, and the choreography of the action scenes
are so poor that anyone with eyes can see that sometimes those swords don't come
anywhere close to touching their "victims".
"Saulabi" is a decent TV movie, although it takes
its ludicrous situations way too seriously. It has the kind of "love
triangle" tailor made for soap operas because they're so cheesy and
unbelievably plotted, and the acting is too spotty by all involve to be
effective. The Japanese characters really don't have much to do other than to
grunt and look evil. And no offense to actress Uememya Masako, but why in the
world would anyone fight (much less be willing to die) for her? She's spoiled,
not very attractive, and because of her aristocratic upbringing, spends her time
moping about how "bad" her life of luxury is. Of course, if she
weren't so rich and well off, she wouldn't have all those free time to
"think" so much in the first place.
Note: despite the film's rather strange English
title ("Time Travel to the Time of the Samurai") the
movie is not about time travel.
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