Touches You

Just perfect...

best movie i've ever seen.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

I caught this movie on Netflix. Had never heard about it before, and was pleasantly surprised. The characters are deep, the dialogue is fun, the action is fantastic, the story great, and the special effects OK. Most impressive of all was the solid acting, especially during the final fight sequence. Lovely stuff.This movie brings me back in time, into a dark movie theater, at the very end of 'The Matrix', back in 1999. It had such a promising ending, and then they announced sequels that turned out to be poor.Even though 'Woochi' is not a sequel to 'The Matrix', it feels like a movie that successfully went where those sequels didn't go. Highly recommended for those who enjoy fantasy, action, and a bit of time travel.

An action-packed Korean fantasy epic that charts the story of warring wizards transported to a modern city and the chaos they wreak therein, WOOCHI THE DEMON SLAYER sounds great when you see the story written out. Sadly, though, watching the actual movie is a different story altogether. WOOCHI THE DEMON SLAYER turns out to be a weakly-plotted comedy, full of irritating breakneck editing and general disregard for the usual conventions of cinema: it's overlong, rambling, trivial and most of all a bore.The trailer sells this as a full-blown action movie but it turns out to be a comedy. Now, Asian comedies don't typically do well overseas, so I can see why the trailer was cut that way, but it's still a bit of a cheat. The humour isn't very funny and the script, including various evil wizards, travelling between dimensions, shape-shifting goblins and the like, is all over the place. The one thing the film does boast is some excellent special effects work in the form of above-average CGI, but the elaborate action scenes are spoilt slightly by the disjointed editing and general lack of cohesion. It's a shame, because if the comedy had been toned down and the drama upped, this could have been a very good film indeed; as it stands it's an overlong misfire.

My DVD for big budget Korean fantasy blockbuster Woochi is a superbly packaged two-disc presentation loaded with lavish extras; what a shame then that the film isn't really worth the attention it has received, either from the Korean movie-going public or the DVD company that has released it here in the UK.Although Woochi boasts a high level of invention throughout, and contains a few undeniably impressive moments of action, for every positive, one can easily find several negatives: the cinematography is impressive, but the CGI is inconsistent and rapid editing leads to confusion; the story is loaded with innovative fantasy elements, but they are introduced in such a random, disjointed fashion that the inevitable result is even more chaos and confusion; a memorable score competes against the movie's incessantly loud soundtrack; and the humour is, as often seems the case with Asian comedy, very hit and miss.Just about worth seeing for the occasional genuinely outstanding set-piece—the 'multiple versions of the hero battling a pair of goblins' scene is particularly good—but at over two hours long, with much of the action being utterly incomprehensible, Woochi is far from essential.

For once, I found the movie actually better than the underwhelming trailer. Woochi is an action fantasy comedy movie with one half taking place in the past and the other in modern South Korea. It's not traditional fantasy with traditional magic. The so-called goblins, only fantasy creatures in here, are actually beast-men able to take human appearance and you only really see two of them (maybe 3 depending on how you count). However, they're really well done and animated. The magic is of the taoist kind with "spells" written on little pieces of paper. Sounds lame but works wonderfully. I found it quite different than the usual and often a delight to behold. Wooji, the title character, is a very confident trickster mage who is a lot of fun and his introduction was a great moment. He's constantly surprising and I loved the character as well as his comic-relief sidekick. The 3 taoist monks were also quite enjoyable and got way more interesting as the movie went on. The ambiguous and stoic main villain had a lot of presence but the "goblins", although excellent martial artists, were bland in terms of personality.The plot and motives, mostly exposed in the starting moments and in snippets afterwards, were quite forgettable and not really necessary for enjoyment. The special effects were very well done combining seamlessly CGI and real actors. It was even better sometimes than big-budget American movies. Not only that but there were several beautiful original sequences rarely or never seen before (at least by me). Some of those include going in and out of paintings, multiplication of bodies (think Naruto) and flying tramways. The action scenes were exciting and very cool but unfortunately the fights were often too closed-in and fast for my poor eyes. The comedic moments were funny and didn't turn the film into bad parody. I must admit becoming fidgety and my mind wandering more than half-way through as if the movie was too long or had lost part of my interest. I've seen movies that were as long or longer not thinking of when they would end as I did in Woochi. I had a good time watching this film and would recommend a rental to those who like somewhat exotic martial arts fantasies with comedic elements.Rating : 7 out of 10.