Kundo: Age of the Rampant

''Kundo: Age of the Rampan'' is a South Korean period film which has become one of the country's highest grossing movies ever upon release. It has also won eight awards in five different film festivals. The movie is primary an action movie and costume drama in authentic locations. The film has a sinister atmosphere filled with tension due to a charismatic acting by Kang Dong-won who is playing an ambitious villain and Ha Jung-woo who portrays a sympathetic antihero who becomes an inspiration for oppressed citizens. The fight scenes are filled with both brutal tension and elegant aesthetics. Despite the coherently dark mood, there are a couple of more amusing and emotional scenes that keep the movie dynamical over an epic length of nearly two and a half hours. The story takes place during the late Joseon era and is partially inspired by authentic historic events. In a time of aristocratic tyranny, an illegitimate son strives for power and hires a poor butcher as assassin. Since the butcher is unable to complete his mission, he is terribly punished but manages to survive. He decides to change his life in order to protect those he was supposed to kill and fight those who have punished him. He changes identity and becomes a ferocious swordsman who helps the poor, persecuted and helpless people until the time is come to challenge his worst enemy to a final duel. The only negative points about this movie are the fact that the story itself is quite predictable and standard for its genre despite a couple of good conspiracies and intrigues and the exaggerated final fight that feels incoherent if compared to the rather realistic fight scenes in the rest of the movie. Still, ''Kundo: Age of the Rampant'' is a highly entertaining movie with lots of action and drama, great actors and characters and stunning locations and settings. Fans of historically inspired action movies can't get around one of last year's best Asian movies.

I personally thought this movie was alright and what standout about this movie the most is the cast. In a way the story is sort of similar to "Robin Hood" except there is no love interest between the protagonist and someone else. And it puts quite a bit of emphasis on the sword fighting martial arts sequences. There isn't many standout action sequence, except maybe on scene where the vicious nobleman takes on a group of bandits by himself (which is probably the best scene in the movie). Overall, this is a rebellion movie about peasants that got pushed around too far by corrupt officials and they decide to stand and fight. When it comes to the core, it's basically a story about a butcher that lost everything going up against nobleman who has father issues. In fact more than the butcher who is basically the hero or anti-hero of the story is one of the least interesting characters. And the most interesting one in this flick being the pretty boy nobleman who is also and elite swordsman and his back-story and what makes him tick. Overall this is a alright watch, with few decent scenes but when it comes down to it, it's actually quite forgettable. And just didn't have much meat to it. Sometimes simple story can really work, but in this case I just didn't really care. 6.2/10