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Customer Reviews of Musa - The Warrior

Just What Cinema was Invented For
At the time of its domestic release, "Musa-The Warrior" was the most expensive film ever made in Korea, an ambitious epic that took five years to complete but paid off handsomely at the Korean box office.
Set in 14th Cent. Imperial China, after the Ming ousting of the Mongol Yuan dynasty, the film follows a band of Koryo warriors escorting a diplomatic missing from Korea in an increasingly hostile China. When the Ming have them arrested and exiled as spies, the warrior band find themselves outcasts in the hostile landscapes of the northern Chinese deserts, and caught in the crossfire between the Ming and Yuan forces.
Discovering that the Yuan have taken a ravishingly beautiful Ming princess prisoner, the band begin to see a way out of their desperate situation; if they can rescue her and return her safely home, they will both heal the rift with the Ming and find themselves a way home to Korea.
Of course, things don't run quite as smoothly as planned, and the exhausted and gradually diminishing band of Koryo soldiers, led by a general beginning to doubt his own ability and tacitly challenged by a recently freed slave whose supreme martial abilities come as something of a surprise, have to fight a series of bloody battles as they make their demanding journey through the deserts and forests of China.
These battles will be a bit of a shock to anyone expecting the high-wire martial arts mayhem of classic Hong Kong cinema---in their emphasis on hard, physical fighting and relentless bloodletting they owe more to "Gladiator" than to "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon".
Nevertheless, "Musa" contrives to make its conflicts as visually ravishing as possible; the glinting swords, spurting blood and severed limbs are just parts of a larger canvas in which violence is every bit as balletic as in Peckinpah's 'The Wild Bunch" and just as unavoidable as in Kurosawa's "Seven Samurai"---both of which films, with their romantic evocations of doomed fighters, come to mind when watching "Musa".
Despite its influences, though, the film is never derivative of earlier epics and its tale of heroism and violence is counterbalanced by its beautifully, if economically, drawn characters and its reflections on the nature of freedom, choice, and individual responsibility.
All in all, "Musa" is a glorious achievement that ravishes the senses and touches the heart.

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Must See MUSA
Apparently, from several of the internet and media reviews associated to this Korean film, much has been already said regarding the amount of time (5 years) and money (over $60 million) spent on completing this epic, and I find that a tremendous disservice. Instead, reviewers should be concentrating on discussing the story: it is epic in scope (Koreans "trapped" behind enemy lines trying to return home with their dignity restored find an unlikely ally in their inadvertant rescue of an already kidnapped princess); the cinematography is breathtaking (it appears as if every single shot was composed specifically to contain all possibly relevant elements); and the acting is absolutely superb. MUSA is not the squeamish; be forewarned that the several action pieces are relatively bloody -- similar to a SAVING PRIVATE RYAN pre-industrial civilization time period -- but they are astonishing to behold. This film is a stunner, through and through. While the climax arguably goes on a tad too long, the layers of complexity wrought throughout several interwoven plotlines are all resolved.

In short, MUSA is the film dreams are born from.

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I loved it but....
Fantasic Film! The absolute only complaint I may think of is the music score is lacking in certain scenes, so much so as to be distracting. But, even so, I highly recommend this one. If you liked Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, this is in the same genre. A great ride.