| Overall Grade: |
A+ |
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| Story: |
A+ |
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| Acting: |
A+ |
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| Direction: |
A+ |
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| Visuals: |
A+ |
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Metaphor of Imoogi Metamorphosis
by º´¿ì (movies profile)
Jan 23, 2008
40
of
65 people found this review helpful
Stop ranting and raving about this movie. I really enjoyed the whole movie from the beginning to the ending credit.
The story is very interesting because it transforms the old Korean legend into the people of modern day LA very cleverly, which synergistically elevates the originality of the story line. The parallel arrangement of time and space enhances the cohesiveness between ancient Korea and modern day LA.
While the two main characters change from Koreans to Caucasians by means of reincarnation, the dinosaur like creatures and the evil army play the role of the missing links between the entirely dichotic time and place.
The LA battle scene is one of the most exhilarating movie battle scene in recent films. The missile and gun fight between Apache helicopters and flying dragons are nothing like any other movies. Whenever the helicopters collide into flying dragons, I felt as if I was attacked by those awesome creatures. The sound effects were succinctly utilized to boost the realism of the battle scene.
The plot is not as awkward as some people said. I found myself pretty well dove into the story line without many glitches. The plot flows fluently thanks to the well thought directing. Things are exactly where they are supposed to be. If any single element of the scenes are missing, probably the story would not connect well, however, when time and place change, the reasons of the transitions are well explained.
The oriental dragons are very different from western ones. For example, they don't have wings. They metamorphose from a serpent(Imoogi) into a sacred dragon with the power of dragon ball (Yuh yi joo).
In many Korean legends, Imoogi is depicted as an incomplete life form symbolizing the mundane average people of no novelty. An Imoogi is a mere local guardian god often guards a small town or village. Depend on the local tradition, some villages or towns were believed to have human sacrifice regularly to appease the guardian yearly or once in every ten or hundred years. Imoogi needs a human sacrifice (female virgin) to become a sacred dragon. Dragons are Gods governing the sky controlling the weather especially the rain, which is critical in traditionally agricultural Asian society. Being a sacred creature which can fly in to the sky is the ultimate purpose of the existence of Imoogi. So, some Imoogies threatened the unwilling village to earn human sacrifice often in a violent way. Many Imoogi stories involves sad lovers who lost their beloved as ceremonial sacrifice, and also the stories of failure of evil Imoogies from being transformed in to the dragons.
Director Shim adopted this Korean legend carefully and intelligently and created this modern day myth.
Just seeing an oriental dragon visualized in such a detailed manner makes this movie worth to see. Besides, old Korean villages, costumes and soldiers and guards are surprisingly well presented, which is very educational to any people who has little or no exposure to this long but unknown culture. The music used for ending credit is a famous Korean folk song called 'Arirang' which symbolizes unfulfilled love of young lovers.
Watch this movie. This movie is like a Christmas gift package. It has fun, excitement, culture, myth, visuals and music. The ten bucks you paid for you and your children have never been worth this much. |
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