THE SOUL GUARDIANS (1998)

I’ve not seen too many Korean films so I was quite excited when I sat down and watched the latest film that the ‘Boss Man’ had decided to send my way. The Soul Guardians is, in essence a classic good versus evil, both striving for the same thing. The good I refer to comes in the shape of an unlikely trio of hero’s: A priest, a young boy (a powerful Magician), and the brawn of the outfit – a man with a dagger on his arm that is possessed by the spirit of his dead sister. The three of them work together to help stave off the advances of the ultimate Evil himself – The Devil. But I’m getting slightly ahead of myself here, let me go back to the beginning.

The film starts brilliantly, with a SWAT raid on what looks like an abandoned warehouse. The police soon discover that rather than being abandoned, the building has been used for a mass suicide of a devil worshiping cult. Their plan was to bring the Devil to earth by sacrificing themselves. This doesn’t go as expected however and the big-man- downstairs is less than happy. The reason for the cock-up in this fool proof plan is that 5 of the band decide that rather than introducing Mr. Spleen to Mr. Pointy, they would prefer to live. How selfish! Actually, one of the survivors is an unborn child who’s mother is a cultist and dies in hospital shortly after the raid. One caesarean section and 20 years later and we see an attractive young female mechanic working under a car. This grease monkey (Sung-kee) is the child that was saved (but you knew that didn’t you) and she is blissfully unaware that Satan wants her dead.
So, just like all of my reviews (and as mentioned) the film starts really well, and after watching the opening 10 minutes I was excitedly prepared for the rest of what I hoped would be an action heavy rollercoaster of a film with a gritty cult vibe. How disappointed I was. Let’s start with some good points: Firstly there was a lot of blood and violence. The director had no problems chucking the red stuff about. Secondly there was a nice bit of eye candy in the shape of a very sexy reporter. Thirdly we have to take into account the fact that the story was actually pretty good, but on the flipside this is where I have to say the disappointment started because I found that it was quite hard to follow due to a confusing and very disjointed screenplay. Things happened that seemed to have no reason or explanation – I won’t tell you in detail the worst of these offending moments suffice it to say that it happens in the dying minutes of the film and involves a cross. You’ll know it when you see it. It really annoyed me as it was a pivotal point in the films climax and as far as I’m concerned it wasn’t explained at all. This isn’t the only irritatingly incoherent point in the story but to my mind it’s the most infuriating.

The trio of good guys are responsible for the safety of the survivors, although they obviously don’t do too good a job as by the middle of the film all but one is dead. The devices they use to keep their unknowing charges safe are magic, faith and, as I mentioned earlier, a dagger with a soul in it. This dagger quite literally has a mind of it’s own and is quite often seen flying around of its own accord. The wielder of this clever bit of kit is the brawn of the operation and quite often gets physical, but unfortunately I was never impressed with any of the fight scenes. So many films have fisty-cuffs and so many of them do it well. If you are wanting a good brawl in a film you have to make sure that it’s entertaining and this just didn’t leave me panting for more. The magical side of things is controlled by a young boy, but I’ll mention him in a little while. Finally there’s the Priest who provides faith, leadership and brains and is a fatherly figure for all of them. Between them they try to hold off the coming of Satan and take the one remaining survivor more directly into their care to make Beelzebub's life a little more difficult. But as you might expect he has a plan and things generally go pear shaped.
The acting on the whole, whilst not exactly Oscar material, was passable and the characters quite engaging. Believe you me, I’ve seen a lot worse in some of the nonsense that Vaughan flings my way. If you’ve read any of my reviews in the past you may have noticed that I’m not a big fan of children playing important rolls in films. I don’t mean like in the Sixth Sense, I’m talking more like Jurassic Park ("I know this, it’s a Unix System"- Somebody please feed her to the T-Rex). Very occasionally though a film will come along that has a young actor in it who I don’t want to see mangled or boiled alive in acid or covered in honey and nailed to the floor with his face over an ants nest, and this is one of those films. The boy in this tale is a very powerful magic maker and I liked him from the moment his character brings to life a beat-em-up creature from the Playstation so that he can fight him in the real world (I think the game was Tobal for all you gaming fiends out there). I have to say though that on the whole I found this film disappointing. I was expecting so much more and it just didn’t deliver. Let’s hope my next foray into Korean cinema is a better experience.

Hidden in the extras part of this Tai Seng DVD release are 6 trailers for other films from the distributors catalogue and a making of documentary that, as expected, goes into some detail about how the film was put together, how the director was worried that it would bomb etc and how it was one of the first Korean films to take advantage of CGI. All in all it’s quite a good interview, and at over 12 minutes, gives a good overview of the production.