Volcano High

Last night we decided to watch the South Korean "X-Men meets the Matrix" superhiro flick Volcano High that I had picked up from the airport. We knew absolutely nothing about this film except what the DVD cover said, so we had no idea what was waiting for us...

At first I tried to take the film seriously, but quite soon it turned out that this was the wrong approach. The story was simple (I think) - Kim Kyeong-su, the hero of the story, gets transferred to a new school where all the pupils have superhero powers where he falls in love with the captain of the Kendo team, Icy Jade. There was lot of other stuff in the movie too, like secret powerful manuscript that might or might not have existed, rivalry with Jang Ryang, the Dark Ox who kept repeating his name every time he spoke (we think his real name was "soy bean"), poisoned principal, a guy in (school) prison that was (wrongly) accused of poisoning him, mad vice principal and five powerful teachers that were hired to clean up the school from rebels.

So, suffice to say the movie was at times very confusing. This in itself is not that uncommon with Asian films - I sometimes find that you'll pick up the plot after the first hour or so, as the beginning of movies can be very... fractured. I liked it though - it had us laughing in fits at times, and I'm pretty sure it meant to be funny. Special effects were cool, and action was good too - maybe not quite as good as top Hong Kong movies - but especially the final battle between Kim Kyeong-su and Mr. Ma was very entertaining.

Maybe not for the average movie fan, but if you want to try something different, give it ago.

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