Warrior, The

Woo-sung Jung
Sung-kee Ahn
Jin-mo Ju
Ziyi Zhang
Yong-woo Park
Jeong-hak Park
Hye-jin Yu
Seok-yong Jeong
Du-il Lee
Yeong-mok Han
Jung Woo-Sung
Sung Ki Ahn

Director	Sung-su Kim (II); Kim Sung-Su
Producer	Zhang Xia; Min-Hwan Cho
Writer	Sung-Soo Kim

The Warrior combines gorgeous cinematography, complex historical politics, and joltingly bloody action sequences to create a sweeping historical spectacular. A squadron of Korean soldiers, sent to protect a diplomatic envoy to China, find themselves unmoored when the envoys are killed in clashes with Chinese and Mongol soldiers. Struggling to return home, they rescue a high-handed Chinese princess (Ziyi Zhang, House of Flying Daggers, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) and decide that protecting her is their best chance to survive, and possibly improve Korean-Chinese relations as well. Unfortunately, the Mongols want her back, and the squadron find their numbers slowly diminishing as they fight their way to an isolated military outpost. Though there's a more realistic context for the action--The Warrior is based on a historical event and the characters are well-developed--the battle scenes deliver some visceral thrills; the violence is graphic (beheadings, arrows plunging into necks, limbs sliced off) but grippingly choreographed. An above-average action movie; however, it is highly recommended that viewers watch it with subtitles, as the dubbing is typically wretched. --Bret Fetzer