Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		2.5

Athena: Goddess of War Blu-ray Movie Review

Eris, Goddess of Discord is more like it.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman October 23, 2012

For some reasons, female secret agents have never had as easy a time of it in mass media as have their male counterparts. When the James Bond craze took hold in the early sixties, and then was followed in quick succession by a glut of television properties that included everything from The Man from U.N.C.L.E. to I Spy (not to mention ill conceived reboots of existing series like Amos Burke, Secret Agent, the “new, improved” version of Burke’s Law), it probably didn’t take a rocket scientist, or even a midlevel Hollywood executive, to try to create a female spy in the same mold. And yet over and over again, those attempts failed, at least for the most part, even when they were based on preexisting properties that had at least somewhat of a track record with the public. Remember Modesty Blaise? Probably not, even though its source comic strip was something of a sensation in its day. And what about the short-lived spinoff of the adventures of Napoleon Solo and Ilya Kuryakin, The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. ? Not only did that Stefanie Powers starrer last only one poorly rated season, it may have led to the early demise of its parent program, which limped along for a relatively short while after Girl left the airwaves in 1967. Even more contemporary superstars have had spotty track records with female superspies, with Angelina Jolie doing okay with Salt but failing to really attract the expected megacrowds with the Lara Croft films, admittedly not exactly spy thrillers but at least tangentially related to the genre in style and even substance. Probably the most successful female spy outing in recent years has been the Jennifer Garner series Alias, and if Athena: Goddess of War, a Korean production culled from a big budgeted television series (shades of Girl from U.N.C.L.E. ) doesn’t have anything near J.J. Abrams’ penchant for plot twists and turns, it does have Alias’s same breakneck pace and over the top action elements. That said, Athena: Goddess of War, perhaps due to the fact it was cobbled together from a much longer form series, has a slapdash quality that is outright confusing at times and which may leave as many viewers scratching their heads as it does leave them breathless.

Part of the confusion for Western audiences in trying to ferret out exactly what’s going on and who all the characters are in Athena: Goddess of War may at least in part be due to the fact that this property is a sequel to another Korean television series called Iris (note that this foreign Blu-ray release is evidently another feature film cut from the much longer series). And in fact a lot of Athena: Goddess of War plays (to an “outsider” at least) like we’re joining a story in something akin to mid- sentence. The film gets off to a blistering start with what appears to be a mission to get some guy’s palm print (though eagle eyed viewers will notice that the super secret scanner being used to get a picture of it is actually wafted over the back of the guy’s hand), a mission which goes horribly wrong and results in a nonstop spray of bullets, lots of dead bodies, and at least one agent jumping rather amazingly right into a waiting sports car driven by the woman who will turn out to be our kind of heroine (more about her in a moment). But then, wait: was it all a dream sequence? That’s the clear implication given by what happens next, though that implication is then pushed aside by all the spying shenanigans that ensue. Let the head scratching begin.

If you were a fan of Alias, you know that by the time the show was getting a bit long in the tooth it became virtually impossible at times to figure out whose side several main characters were on, and that same tendency informs a lot of Athena: Goddess of War. The heroine of the piece, Yoon Hye-in (Soo Ae), is supposedly a “Black Ops” member of a super-secret Korean intelligence agency, but she may also be a double agent for the so-called Athena Organization, a power mad aggregation out to control—power, as in Korea’s burgeoning nuclear industry. Son Hyeok (Cha Seung-won), another worker for what is apparently supposed to be an American intelligence agency, may also be a double agent for Athena. Again, the problem with this convoluted tale of who’s who and what side are they on is badly hampered by the film’s cut and paste approach to whittling down a multi episode television series into a fairly short feature film.

The film is a rather nicely picturesque travelogue through several gorgeous locations (something that may remind some cult television fans of I Spy’s globetrotting ways), something that at least keeps the proceedings visually interesting even if the main story is often incomprehensible. There are also a number of excellently staged set pieces, including some great martial arts moments for Hye-in which may in fact remind other cult television fans of Alias. That said, there’s virtually no reason to invest much time or energy in caring about any of these characters, as they’re all paper thin at best and because of the drastic editing involved, they often seem to do things with absolutely no motivation whatsoever (my favorite moment in this regard is a temper tantrum Hyeok throws fairly early in the film when things take an unexpected turn, a reaction which seems completely disproportional to what has just happened). This is now the second live action release from FUNimation in a row (the first being Lost Girl: Season 1), and some may end up wishing the label had been able to license the entire series rather than this confusing and ill conceived Reader’s Digest version.

Athena: Goddess of War Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Athena: Goddess of War is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of FUNimation Entertainment with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. This digitally shot feature (culled from a television series) looks best when it gets outside into any of its many picturesque locales. The shiny smooth surface of this offering means there's little if any depth to the look of the series, and it also isn't especially robust in terms of palette or saturation. But the image is perfectly clear and well detailed, though contrast is strangely variable at times, perhaps due to different units having handled various sequences.

Athena: Goddess of War Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Athena: Goddess of War features Dolby TrueHD 5.1 mixes in both the original Korean language and an English dub. Both of these are fairly aggressive, at least in terms of series television (whether or not that series has been adapted into feature film form). The best surround activity is of course during the action sequences, especially some of the over the top set pieces like the bristling shootout that begins this enterprise. Dialogue is very cleanly presented and several of the exterior locations offer some good placement of discrete ambient environmental effects. Fidelity is very good and dynamic range is extremely wide.

Athena: Goddess of War Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Trailer (HD; 4:52)

Athena: Goddess of War Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Athena: Goddess of War looks like it was an interesting series, but that's the problem: we're only getting dribs and drabs of it in this compressed, edited version. It's virtually impossible to care about these characters, not just because two of them aren't especially noble to begin with, but also because things happen in such an apparently willy-nilly fashion that it's all jumble more often than not. The film is incredibly picturesque, with lots of great location work, and some of the action sequences are pretty spiffy, but the whole enterprise just lurches around and never really makes an impact. It would have been much more advantageous to have released the entire series, though that might have created licensing (and dubbing) issues that no one wanted to deal with.