Review of War of the Arrows (2011) by Steve W — 13 Jun 2012

Korean action film is a very well made story of a master archer who set's out to rescue his sister when she is kidnaped along with his village by a horde of Mongols. Nam-Yi (Park Hae-il) uses his skilled marksmanship to harass the horde while himself being hunted by a squad of skilled Mongol soldiers.

this leads to the inevitable showdown with his sister Ja-in (Seung-yong Ryoo) caught in the middle. The Korean cinema has become quite a force in the last decade and the inspiration taken from the Hong kong cinema of the 80s and 90s definitely comes through, especially with the crime and period thrillers like this one.

And that's just fine. Arrows has it's own style, it's sumptuously filmed and has some very exciting action scenes. The only thing that holds it back sometimes is that characters, at times, do dumb things just to set up a dramatic situation.

Why would any experienced soldier allow an opponent to get the same human shield between them twice in one confrontation when he could have easily shot him? It's as if director Kim Han-min had a really cool scene in his mind and didn't have more logical ways to make it happen so, he just went with it.

Another such scene could have been resolved if a character just yelled a warning but, instead choses to shoot a horse out from under someone to alert them to an enemy's presence. What? Arrows is still a very entertaining and sometimes moving film and the acting is good enough to carry the dramatics of the story, it just needed a little logic to some of the scenarios to keep the drama strong.