The Most Expensive Korean Film So Far

Maybe no movie where swords appear will contain a convincing human story. American reviewers searching for excuses to value such a film inevitably praise the "visuals" or "cinematography," coded apologetic for the absence of plot and fully realized characters.
The Korean film Musa ("Warriors") is one of these. It's Korea's first acclaimed offering in the international martial arts genre. The fact that it gets stuck as a "martial arts" film is wholly the result of regional stereotyping, though -- this is more like Braveheart than any Chinese or Japanese movie I've seen. How like Braveheart? The characters are for the most part sturdy men with one or two personality characteristics each, with exactly one princess to add a little color. The princess is played by Zhang Ziyi, apparently trying to take as many acting jobs as possible before she starts showing some age. Here she keeps the haughty personality from Crouching Tiger, though without having to do any fighting. She appears to have treated this film as a paid vacation, recycling the lines and expressions from earlier jobs. The fight scenes are not the fanciful wire-assisted acrobatics of the Chinese tradition. Instead, the grim hacking of characters at one another is lifted from Braveheart or Gladiator.
Most unforgiveable, though, is that this movie just isn't any fun to watch. Its plot has the characters trek though the desert to the seashore, and then hole up in an old fortress until the final battle with their Mongol pursuers. Structurally, you can already see the problem: this film has a lot of trudging and waiting around. It's monotonous. Not recommended.