Review by Leonard Norwitz
Studio:
Theatrical: Showbox & Primetime Entertainment
Blu-ray: Sheng Chi Media (Taiwan)
Disc:
Region: FREE!
(as verified by the
Momitsu region FREE Blu-ray player)
Runtime: 1:50:07.161
Disc Size: 18,172,488,260 bytes
Feature Size: 17,488,852,992 bytes
Video Bitrate: 18.03 Mbps
Chapters: 6
Case: Standard Blu-ray case
Release date: November 11th, 2009
Video:
Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
Resolution: 1080i / 23.976 fps
Video codec: MPEG-2 Video
Audio:
DTS Audio Korean 1509 kbps 5.1 / 48 kHz / 1509 kbps / 16-bit
Dolby Digital Audio Korean 448 kbps 5.1 / 48 kHz / 448 kbps
Subtitles:
English, Chinese (traditional and simplified), none
Extras:
• Trailer for Mercury Man – in SD
The Film:
7
It would be foolish to expect explicit revelations in this
movie. Certainly there is nothing about the cover art or
even YesAsia’s Product Description that should lead you to
think you’re going to get to see a lot of skin here. The
title comes close to capturing something of the charm and
naïveté of the story and it characters, as A Tale of
Legendary Libido is funny and poignant by turns. I think if
you expect something along the lines of a folk tale along
the lines of Paul Bunyan, re-imagined by director Shin Han
Sol (The Art of Fighting) for the omnivorous appetites of
the modern moviegoer, you are less likely to be disappointed
or misled. How else are we to understand such fantastical
goings on as an increase in Yang granting not only a large
and fulltime erection but sufficient urine to put out a
small forest fire, or a row of young boys marching and
peeing giant waterfalls to the strains of Elgar’s “Pomp and
Circumstance?”
In a remote and timeless village (there is electricity, but
no phone), the balance of Yin has tipped the scale, and the
appetite of its women is too much for the average
man. The women all look healthy; the men look pretty much
worn out. The few with sufficient Yang are prized. Case in
point: Gang-Mok (Oh Dal-Su, whom we can enjoy in Park Chan
Wook’s Thirst and I’m a Cyborg, but that's O.K.), who,
though unmarried, doesn't get out much. (There is one scene
where the village women hide in the rocks to watch him bathe
in the river. When he turns innocently toward them he
displays all he's got. The women are aghast, but all we get
is a superimposed cotton ball (see cap). Gang-Mok needs all
his strength to look after his brother Byon Gang-Soe (Bong
Tae Gyu – whom you might remember as the persistent neighbor
of The Good Neighbor’s Wife), who is everything below the
waist that his brother is not. Byon is the town joke.
Everyone laughs at him – men and women. It’s no help that he
is a homely sad sack to boot. It’s all Gang-Mok can do to
keep his brother from breaking up the local tavern or
getting into serious fights, Byon being able to handle
himself pretty well in that department.
It’s not just a question of size – Byon is called “the twig”
for good reason, apparently – it’s that he is pretty much
impotent, not that he gets much opportunity to test this
out. And who wouldn't be with the sort of reputation he has
staring at him at every turn. His brother feels some
responsibility, not only because he is the older brother,
but because Byon’s disability occurred as the result of a
freak accident when he was younger more or less at Gang-Mok's
hands.
Byon is unable to face his brother’s new fiancée, a lovely,
simple and athletic girl (Kim Jin-Ah in her debut
performance) who he hopelessly pines for. So he goes off to
sulk for a spell, and when he returns he finds that nearly
the entire male population has been drafted for a war. Gang-Mok
has enlisted in his brother’s place, leaving instructions
that Byon should take care of his fiancée. This would be
difficult enough but, you see, while he was away, Byon
learns from a monk how to restore his Yang by drinking it
directly from a totem icon. Byon is admonished to take only
one sip else “the village would suffer”. But what does Byon
care for those who had laughed at him all his life – and so
he drinks the whole thing! And therein lies the tale.
Image:
5/8
The first number indicates a relative level of excellence
compared to other Blu-ray video discs on a ten-point scale.
The second number places this image along the full range of
DVD and Blu-ray discs.
There’s a pervasive chalky sheen to the image that is at
odds with the folksy setting. It wants a more painterly
look, I think, but instead there is a kind of polish over
the faces – partly the result of DNR that washes out some
detail, but also because it is aggressively lit to start
with. The color is very good, with natural flesh tones when
not deliberately filtered. It would have been nice to have
the Korean DVD with which to compare, especially in that the
Blu-ray is an MPEG-2 encode in 1080i (interlaced).
Audio & Music:
4/7
Oh-oh! What happened here? While we can rightly be annoyed
that there is no uncompressed audio track, the fault goes
well beyond this. Except for the music, which is rendered as
fully and richly as Dolby Digital permits, there are varying
degrees of exaggerated upper midrange creating at times a
sort of electronic swishing of varying degrees. Crowds of
people walking to and from on the street, digging into the
dirt, splashing water, even dialogue to some extent, are all
affected. This problem persists on both DTS and Dolby
Digital tracks, possibly less pronounced on the Dolby
Digital. Not having the Korean DVD to compare, I cannot say
what the source of the problem is – but it is bloody
annoying when it intrudes.
Operations:
4
There is no way for an English monolingualist such as I to
tell how explicit the language really is, but I'm guessing
that while the gist is perfectly clear, the nuance and local
jokes are not – nor am I sure how they could be without a
commentary audio or text track to explain. The menu, with
its images of the protagonist with his finger raised in the
air in a kind of victory salute, are contrary to his
character and completely without precedent in the movie.
Otherwise, the menu's dual language operations are clear
enough, though there are only six chapter divisions. What's
up with that!
Extras:
-1
Adding insult to injury the only extra feature is a trailer
in SD for what promises to be a dreadful Thai action flic
titled Mercury Man. None of the Extra Features on the KD
Media Korean 2-disc DVD are included here. They would have
been without subtitles anyway, so perhaps the issue is moot.
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Bottom line:
5
I had a good time with this movie, and as I revisited it to
create the screencaps I found myself enjoying it all over
again. There are several scenes that have cinematic power
well beyond its low comedic, ribald origins. I had not
previously read YesAsia’s comparison to Austin Powers, which
strikes me as decidedly wrong-headed, nor did I have reason
to expect anything more explicit than I got – in fact, I
found more skin than I expected. However, I cannot in good
conscience recommend this Blu-ray: the video image is only
fair and the audio definitely has some tizzy issues. I will
keep an eye out for the Korean DVD and, if I see one, will
report. This may turn out to be one of those rare instances
where the DVD is better – or not.
Leonard Norwitz
February 20th, 2010
