War of the arrows (Korean movie)

This is from a Korean movie I just watched with my friends. It's called "War of the arrows", or then "Arrow, the ultimate weapon", of which the first one is much better as a name, but I don't know which one is more accurate translation of Choi-jong-byeong-gi Hwal (Google translate didn't help at all).

As a movie, it's pretty good, but as an archery film, superb! Never before have I seen so much, so good and so interesting archery in a movie! This is almost like Lars Andersen coming to the big screen!

And which is also great, is that the archers are now in the main role, which rarely happens in movies. Usually it's always the swordsman who gets all the glory, while archers are just extras shooting some shower of arrows at the beginning of a battle. In reality archers were much more important than that, they continued to shoot enemies throughout the battle, and not with arrow rains, but with direct shots.

I will start with the good parts, since there are many of those in this movie:

1. Mongolian release. I have not seen very many Asian archery movies (many kung-fu movies have archers in them), so the usual one to be seen in films set in Europe is the Mediterranean release. There is probably not the single best way to draw the bow, I happen to like Mediterranean more, since it is easier and don't require excessive equipment. Mongolian release needs a thumb ring, otherwise the archers thumb will become sore very quickly. Anyway, Mongolian release is done right in almost all scenes of this movie.
2. The arrow is on the right side of the bow. It's both right and right, since it's right to keep the arrow on the right side (and not left) of the bow, while shooting in Asian style. Asian people's all seem to keep arrow on the right and use their thumb to keep it in place there. It allows faster re-shooting, as Andersen demonstrated. Europeans keep the arrow on the left side of the bow.
3. Asian side quiver. They used their arrows "on the back" yes, but not over the shoulder, where the arrows are hard to draw from. Instead their quivers were designed to keep the arrows only from their tip area, but still firmly in place, so they could be tilted to almost horizontal way.
4. Keeping an arrow in the bow hand. Usually in movies people only carry arrows in their quivers, but in this scene the main character has one more arrow in his bow hand. It's faster to shoot from there. Even faster woud be from the string hand (Andersen again...)
5. Use of special arrows. This is called "half-pounder" in the movie, and it has a chisel like tip. Broad flat blades were used in arrow tips for different purposes. This is used like a "super arrow" in the movie, which I could criticize a bit, since it seems too powerful, shattering small tree trunks! But still, it's very nice to see some special arrows in films, since we always get only the regular ones, and 'fire arrows', which were more sparsely used than movies makes you think.
6. THIS ONE! Fantastic! The main hero shoots with broken arrows! He makes an arrow guide from a bamboo stalk, and uses it to shoot half arrows. The arrow guide is tied to his thumb, so it doesn't fly when he releases the arrow. Superb!

This movie cannot escape mistakes entirely:

1. The main character shoots sideways many times. You can clearly see where his arrow string touches his clothes. It's not very good form. He also shoots the bow vertically too.
2. In this picture the main antagonist has a poor form. He uses the Mediterranean release, but with four fingers. So it's wrong for a Mediterranean, and also wrong for an Asian. Most other times he uses the Mongolian grip properly. The arrow's fletching inside this same circle is also damaged to the point that there are almost none feathers left.
3. The arrow is on the right side of the antagonists bow, but he keeps it in place with both thumb and index finger. That will hurt the index finger, if released. I admit that it is harder to keep on the right side of the bow, just with a thumb. Maybe this picture is from the early stages of filming and the actor got better over filming time?
4. Back quivers. Most characters in this film have them. Almost all soldiers carry a bow anyway. But back quivers were not used like this, not in Asia either. The protagonist has a better one.

Summa summarum:

This is a very good archery movie, and I recommend it to everyone even remotely interested in archery, history, warfare or Asian cultures in general.