Name: The Taoist Wizard [alternate title: Woo-Chi] (2009)
IMDb: link to The Taoist Wizard page
Genres: Action, Adventure, Comedy, Fantasy. Country of origin: Republic of Korea.
Cast: Kang Dong-won as Jeon Woo-chi, Yeom Jeong-Ah as the Actress, Kim Yun-Seok as Hwa Dam, Song Young-Chang as Buddhist Monk.
Written and directed by: Dong-hun Choi.
A short tale is told of demons being contained by a flute being played. It was to be played for 3000 consecutive days, but the player miscounted.
So we have a comedy.
The monsters get loose and take possession of the flute. Transfers of mastery among humans fails repeatedly.
The incomplete Tao wizard Woo-Chi causes a lot of trouble to obtain the obtain the flute. His master saves his neck and gets the flute. A second master, Hwa-dam, fights him for the flute, which is broken in the process. Since it is split, perhaps the monsters will be contained.
The master of Woo-Chi is killed by Hwa-dam, but Woo-Chi is blamed for it. He is cursed to imprisonment for 500 years, and awakens in the present. The break occurs at 46 minutes into the 135 minute film.
We switch to current times; the monsters are present, the flute is still broken.
Delineation of conflicts:
The monsters would like to be free and remain free using the restored flute. The guardians, or whatever, of the flute free Woo-Chi from his prison inside a painting. He is not interested in defeating the monsters and restoring the flute. The guardians, the Shin-shun, work on his ego, which has plenty of soft spots. The monsters try to kill all of them to get the two pieces of the flute.
There's a subplot about a young woman whom Woo-Chi meets in the past. He also thinks he meets her again in the present. This was not done well at all, but got all too many minutes of screen time.
Resolution: Who cares?
One line summary: Terribly ineffective Tao wizard.
Statistics:
Cinematography: 8/10 Mostly OK. For a relatively low-budget film, the SFX looked fine. I wish Hollywood delivered such bang for the dollar. The standard camera work looked good.
Sound: 8/10 The music was decidedly funnier than the dialog.
Acting: 2/10 Plus one for the actor who played Hwa-Dam; plus one for the actor who played Woo-Chi's master. If I never see any of the others again, it will be too soon.
Screenplay: 0/10 Stealing from Naruto? It is difficult to sustain any interest in such a story. The tipping point for me was around 67 minutes into the film during a tremendously boring and stupidly designed fight scene. The prolog was distressingly long, and the longer section in the present was much too long and uninteresting.
Final rating: 1/10
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