Ok, the story of this film is very complex and told in not strictly chronological order, so I'll try to put it back into order and hope to make sense of it, though I'll probably drop one or two key plot elements:

10 year old Ean (Choi Yu-ri) thinks her dad (Kim Woo-bin) is a cyborg from outer space, and he has a talking car, Thunder (voiced by Kim Dae-myung). She's 100% on point of course, but naturally nobody believes her, so she goes and collects evidence - and using some primitive bugging device, she learns her daddy is to receive a prisoner transport from outer space the next day at a local hospital. She pays a visit to the hospital and witnesses some tentacled machinery transplanting the minds of the prisoners into unused areas of the brains of patients and personnel alike. Eventually her dad and Thunder take her into confidence and tell her it's a perfectly harmless way to dispose of prisoners without killing them. Thing however get out of hands when some of the prisoners take over the minds of their human hosts then drop some atmosphere bombs to make earth more to their liking (and kill humanity in the process). As it is now, they only manage to cover a few blocks of town, but they plan to expand. Only Ean's dad and Thunder stand in their way, and their superweapon, the Divine Blade. But they're on the losing end of things, so they decide to send Ean back some 600 years into the past with the Divine Blade - and unfortunately also some of the prisoners. However, upon arrival, Ean loses the blade.

Still 600 years ago, but 10 years later: The Divine Blade has garnered quite a reputation, even if nobody knows where it really is, but several parties are searching for it, including bumbling dosa magician Muruk (Ryu Jun-Yeol) and his two cat people sidekicks (Shin Jeong-geun, Lee Si-hoon), the showy magician duo Madam Black (Yun Jung-ah) and Mister Blue (Jo Woo-jin), and evil shaman Jajang (Kim Eui-sung) and his ruthless alien sidekick (Ji Gun-woo) ... and of course Ean (now played by Kim Tae-ri), who has brought a gun with her from the future, and who seems to have undergone quite some martial arts training. Eventually, the Divine Blade turns up as dowry at a lavish wedding, so Muruk knocks out the husband-to-be to take his place, while Ean takes the bride-to-be's place, and the two try to constantly outsmart one another to get the blade before realizing they're on the same side and it's actually Jajang who's the baddie here and out of whose hands the blade should be kept at all costs - but of course it falls into his hands, thanks to Madam Black and Mister Blue who were in his employ but are eventually double-crossed by him. Suffice to say, chaos ensues, and the blade changes hands in rapid succession ...

If above synopsis doesn't make perfect sense, then my apologies, but this actually reflects the nature of the movie - and really, it doesn't matter one bit, as this is more of a spectacle movie than anything else, with one action setpiece more impressive than the other, and the fusion of science fiction, fantasy and period elements is just irresistible, while the whole thing is garnered with plenty of irony and comedy, which really helps with the movie's very smooth flow. Of course, it's doubtful the film would hold up to serious analysis as some of its plotholes are just too gaping, but it works brilliantly as pure entertainment.

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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