Swordsman in the Twilight

Before he started working for the Shaw Brothers Studio and kicked off the martial arts movie craze in the West with The King Boxer, Chung Chang-wha built the foundations for action and genre filmmaking in South Korea. Set during the Joseon Dynasty period, A Swordsman in the Twilight introduces us to a lone bamboo-hat-wearing swordsman (Nam Koong-won) who appears in a lawless village. And while what follows may be a standard revenge story, Chung employs long shots to film action sequences that—in contrast to the more acrobatic and energetic style of Hong Kong wuxia—consist primarily of graceful and restrained movements of swordsmen in hanbok facing off against each other. Action is framed against the backdrops of Korean landscapes and palace architecture, the meetings of the swords ever brief, and ultimately deadly. Confidently directed and tightly edited, this film is a rare example of a distinctly Korean-style sword-fighting film that only Chung could have made.