Hwang Sa-jin (1973) Poster

(1973)

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4/10
Watch it with a buddy - the fast forward button is your buddy
ckormos122 June 2019
It opens with our hero meets a wounded man who asks him to deliver a secret message. Then he meets a dying girl with the same request. What are the odds? He is now a spy and delivers the message but the bad guys got there first and abducted the girl.

My copy is a digital file made from an old VHS tape. It plays on a HDTV as a square picture that is cropped mostly on the sides. This was because televisions at the time of VHS were not wide screen. It is English dubbed.

This movie is a South Korean production. In the early 1970s if you were making a martial arts movie in South Korea the whole idea was to make it look just like a Hong Kong or Taiwan production. This movie accomplished that and nothing more. The action is certainly competent for the year but it is really just the same brawl over and over again. The story in between the fights is just not interesting enough to keep your fingers off the fast forward button and when you do forward to a fight it looks just like the last fight. It was interesting only in that it was an early South Korean production and there are few. South Korea did have its own martial arts star at that time - Bobby Kim. I have watched a few of his movies and do not have a kind word for any of them.

I rate this movie as below average for the year and genre. I admit I found it impossible to watch without using fast forward but I did manage to get through it to write a review.
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3/10
Watch only if you're a glutton for punishment
Leofwine_draca24 March 2017
Warning: Spoilers
THE DEVIL'S ASSIGNMENT is another nondescript South Korean martial arts movie that seems to have been revamped by a Hong Kong studio (probably Joseph Lai's IFD Films), given a cast list of fake, made-up names, and dubbed into English for western release. It's a real cheapie, telling of a bunch of characters who are trying to get their hands on a valuable list, the devil's assignment of the title.

The bad guys are a crime boss and his huge team of henchmen while the hero is the erstwhile youth looking to make his name by fighting for justice. Unfortunately the whole thing is low rent and uninteresting, with routine fight choreography and hackneyed storytelling that saps life and spirit from the production. Even kung fu fans will be hard pressed to enjoy this one.
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