Swordbrothers aka The Showdown aka Hyeoltoo (2011)

[xradman]

I could not find much on the net regarding this movie in English. This is a historical fiction set in 1619. A small Joseon army has been sent to Manchuria to support the Ming Dynasty against a larger Qing invaders. Joseon army is routed by a much larger Qing forces and remaining 3 soldiers, a general, his second in command, and a common foot soldier find refugee in an abandoned inn. This directorial debut is by Hoon-jeong Park, screen writer for The Unjust and I Saw the Devil. The film stars Heui-soon Park as Heon-myeong (the general) and Goo Jin as Do-yeong (second in command). Chang-seok Goh co-stars as Doo-soo, a common foot soldier. Much of the story takes place in the inn where all three see each other with much hatred and suspicion. Heon-myeong betrays his best friend and rival Do-yeong by falsely testifying against Do-yeong's father to rival political faction. Doo-soo is unjustly drafted to fight by a corrupt official. I saw the film as being an allegory to class warfare as well as the sad situation in divided Korea.

The film has a very gritty look with drab colors and strong film grain, except during many flash back sequences where color is rich and warm with next to no grain. Unfortunately, the film is encoded in 1080i50. I did not see any combing artifact, so I suspect that the Blu-ray is actually 1080p25 encoded as 1080i50. The Blu-ray runs 106 min down from 111 min in the original theatrical release, so it has been sped up by 4%. The Blu-ray is coded Region B. The audio choices include German and Korean in dts HD MA 5.1. Subtitle choices are optional German and Dutch.

If you can understand Korean, German, or Dutch, this Blu-ray may be worth a look. However, I would probably wait for a proper Korean or English friendly release in 1080p24.