Review: Choi Jae-hoon's The Swordsman.

The Swordsman is a 2020 period action film directed by Choi Jae-hoon and stars Jang Hyuk with additional roles filled in by Kim Hyun-soo, Joe Taslim, and Min Seung-ho.

The film, set around the Qing invasion of Joseon, revolves around Tae-yul (Jang Hyuk) a legendary swordsman who was blinded while defending the king in a coup and retired to live in the mountains with his daughter Tae-ok (Kim Hyun-soo), who gets kidnapped by traffickers (led by Joe Taslim) and forces Tae-yul to get revenge on her kidnappers.

I wanna make one thing perfectly clear, I watched the English Dub of this film. I had no choice, like, Tubi had dub only like just why man. It's either dub and sub, sub no dub, not dub no sub. So, yeah, I can't fully comment on the performances of anyone in the film.

Needless to say, The Swordsman is sorta misleading. First off, Tae-yul isn't really blind, he's growing more blind throughout the film's runtime like in John Woo's The Killer so...he doesn't necessarily qualify as a blind swordsmen like Blind Cheng or Zatoichi.

And, I have to say I really like the pacing in this film. Kinda like 13 Assassins the film spends it's first hour building up why the villains just suck, how they're super evil and downright irredeemable.

They also spend a lot of time fleshing out the backstory and personalities of all the main characters, with only a couple minute long fight scenes sprinkled in to showcase what's in store for later.

And when the later comes it's like bam! No it's long one continuous 45 minute action scene, but it's like a million action scenes tied together with only like a couple minutes of dialogue sprinkled in.

The action is great, it's full of fights where Jang Hyuk is heavily outnumbered and still comes out on top and features him killing people in a couple slashes. There's like guns and ninjas and all this crazy stuff going on.

Honestly, it kinda felt pretty video gamey, which I felt the same with Choi Jae-hoon's other film The Killer, which I did really like to be fair but I definitely get why people wouldn't like the video game-iness of both films.

But again, I loved the action of the film. It was the main selling point for me, it's fast, beautifully shot, and decently bloody and I wouldn't mind seeing more action films done by Choi Jae-hoon.

I also enjoyed Jang Hyuk's performance, what little I could make of it due to the dub. I don't know what it is about him, but he's really good at playing the silent badass character type.

Just like the way he moves, especially in combat where he's always looking down or away is just really cool. Not to mention, he just appears out of nowhere throughout the film "Like a ghost" as described by one of the characters.

While there isn't much for me to talk on The Swordsman as it's a pretty generic period film all in all, but if you liked this film I would recommend you watch The Killer too as it's pretty much this film but in the modern day and without the whole going blind thing.

I would recommend this film, but it's kinda hard to pinpoint who would like this in my opinion. Because like, Zatoichi's kinda there, but it wouldn't hurt to give this film a shot as well.

That's all for now, Love and Peace!

PS: I've seen this film compared to as "Rurouni Kenshin x Zatoichi" and I gotta ask if anyone' seen it, is that true? I've never seen Rurouni Kenshin myself but my mom has and I'm yet to see it (yes I know the creator sucks) but from what I know I don't see any similarities to it.