"Dream of a Warrior" Korean Theatrical Poster
Director: Park Hee-Joon
Producer: Kim Hyung-Joon
Cast: Leon Lai Ming, Lee Na-Young, Park Eun-Hye, Yoon Tae-Young, Kim Ji-Moo
Running Time: 84 min.
By JJ Hatfield
A tale of romance and time travel begins with action in a futuristic? form of Korea. Having a question mark in the first sentence should serve as a warning to the reader – there are many questionable aspects of this movie.
This film is billed as a Hong Kong – South Korean collaboration apparently due to Leon Lai speaking odd sounding Korean, if it really is Leon speaking. Lai plays a police officer who is good at martial arts and who has also been having strange dreams about a woman who seems somewhat familiar. He is assigned an extremely bizarre and dangerous mission that involves what is referred to as time travel and past lives however it might be more accurate to describe it as a parallel existence universe. Actually there isn’t much that is accurate about this movie. I’m not sure who created the subtitles but I don’t think they spoke Korean nor did they understand the plot. Not understanding the plot can be forgiven. I have to admit I cannot honestly say that I understood plot. Even if you speak Korean that really doesn’t help considering there isn’t much talking going on by any character.
Park Hee – Joon directed this muddled mess which is unfortunately nearly as bad as his 2008 Mandate: Mission From The Gods (Maen-de-i-teu: Sin-i-Joo-sin Im-moo). As far as a coherent plot is concerned it may actually be worse. Which brings us back to Lai’s task. A brilliant? scientist named Jang has created a time travel device which he used to send his young daughter Nam-hong to a past life/parallel world/someplace else. Unfortunately she seems to have gotten stuck in this other place where she is known as Rose (Park Eun-hye). Jang decides that Lai, Dean in the other place world would be the perfect guy to rescue his daughter. I was unable to fathom why Jang would make that decision unless he knew about Lai’s dreams however that was not included in the script apparently. In order For Dean to save Jang’s daughter he must first re-experience his time with Rose? Not only is it necessary to re-live this parallel other something love life with Rose before he can save Nam-hong this medieval-science fiction-futuristic otherworldish um, stuff takes up 90% of the movie. And that is a lot considering this flick clocked in At 90 minutes. However the Internet Movie Database website lists Dream of A Warrior with a runtime of one hundred minutes. What happened to the rest of that time? Who knows. Perhaps it went to that parallel universe. Or to be more correct at least according to the subtitles to the city of Dilmoon. I don’t know quite what the movie was going for with this city, but the result was something akin to a nuclear plant meltdown with backdrop mattes of pseudo-Star Wars.
Although the movie tagline is something about “fighting for love” the swirly love part takes up the majority of the screen time. The fights are few and far between and they are simply not special. Weapons include swords and guns that sort of come out of nowhere. The costumes are a schizophrenic mix of King Arthur-ish Camelot and wannabe S&M leather attire. This isn’t however a movie that reaches to bridge opposites, it simply doesn’t know what it wants to be.
Dean is a man of expression. Exactly one expression which he wears throughout the entire film. While this seems consistent with the movie it is odd for Leon Lai. Although perhaps more well known for his long career as a top Hong Kong pop singer Lai has been in a number of movies including Seven Swords, Infernal Affairs 3, and a Golden Horse award winning performance in Three. Having viewed many of his films I can only assume Dream of a Warrior rendered him as unenthusiastic as the audience. The character of Rose is even less interesting. If you do watch the film keep your eyes on Sho Sho (Lee Na-yeong) a leather clad warrior who fights for Dean. Sho Sho is by far the most interesting character in the entire movie who unfortunately doesn’t last through the entire movie. Far too lame to be considered a nightmare this movie is like many dreams that leaves only a dim recollection of confusing images.
JJ Hatfield’s Rating: 2/10
By Equinox21
Ouch. Ok, having just now sat down to write this review some 5 months after watching the movie, it is still no less painful to think about. So as not to lose my dinner, I will keep this short. The movie seemed to have elements of some of sci-fi’s least respected movies, such as Dune (which I personally enjoyed, however I hear that it’s not very widely enjoyed), Highlander TWO (yes, that abysmal piece of work seems to have been part of the inspiration for DoaW), and time travel (any time travel film you’ve seen). To put it mildly, this is by far the WORST Asian film I’ve ever had the misfortune to lay my eyes on. I’d really like my hour and a half back.
Leon Lai, what the hell were you thinking? His acting was stiff and uninspired (perhaps he realized the movie was going to be horrendous from the get go and never gave much effort, at least that wouldn’t surprise me). I don’t remember the character’s name, but the actress on the cover of the DVD has only a BIT part in the movie (so what is she doing on the cover? She either slept with the producer or she’s famous, I don’t know which).
Anyway, avoid this waste of time, money and sanity at all costs. You’ll be better off for it.
Equinox21’s Rating: 1/10
I still have nightmares about this movie, 10 years on. Ok, maybe not. But, I still talk about it to people and how bad it is (not that I actually remember much about it).
Yeah, I remember this being quite the stinker. I found a copy of the DVD at Tower Records back when I would buy just about any movie, sight unseen, as long as it was from Hong Kong. “Oh, it stars Leon Lai? It must be good.” Little did I know.