Spiritwalker Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		1.0
Overall		3.0

Spiritwalker Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman April 6, 2022

Some of you high falutin' literary types (and you know who[m] you are) may hear the name Samuel Beckett and immediately start quoting your favorite bons mots by Vladimir and/or Estragon, but for those of us with more pedestrian tastes, there was another Samuel Beckett who may not have been Waiting for Godot (so to speak), but who was caught in his own kind of limbo. I refer of course to the well remembered series Quantum Leap starring Scott Bakula as the somewhat more familiarly nicknamed Sam Beckett who spent several seasons supposedly jumping into various people's bodies and assuming their identity for an episode in order to (again supposedly) "correct" some "mistake" in history. Quantum Leap may be about to leap right back onto the small screen in a new, improved (?) version starring Raymond Lee and Ernie Hudson, at least if various industry reports are to be believed, but for those jonesin' for this kind of plot device (more or less, anyway) and impatient to start watching an updated Beckett, Spiritwalker will probably suffice quite handily. While there's no time travel element involved, there is time involved, since this tale hinges on the conceit of an amnesiac (again, kind of like Sam Beckett) who finds himself transported into a new body every twelve hours or so, with no clue as to why it's happening or whom he really is. The film relies on the exact same sort of presentational goofiness that Quantum Leap often did, with focal character Kang I-an (Yoon Kye-sang) looking like "himself" until he gazes into a mirror or some other reflective surface and discovers his face is actually different to the "outside world". This aspect is actually played for laughs at one key moment after I-an starts hanging out with a homeless guy named Haengryeo (Park Ji-hwan) and, feeling he's about to "morph" again, engages in what is almost an updated version of Abbott and Costello's immortal "Who's on First?" routine, albeit this time with various posited identities and faces involved.

The so-called Action Trailer included on this disc as a supplement may be a lesson in filmmaker intentions (or at least marketing strategies), with an almost funny litany of supposedly exciting descriptions of "thrilling" car chases, shootouts and hand to hand combat which seems to completely ignore the whole "Quantum Leap" aspect, which may be for the best due to the fact that large swaths of this film really don't make all that much sense. There's an appealing lack of information that comes courtesy of the whole amnesia element, and as I've previously discussed in any number of reviews which rely upon an absence of memory, having an amnesiac focal character puts the audience squarely in the point of view of the amnesiac, since both the character and the audience are trying to figure out just exactly what's going on.

That element is of course either exacerbated or added to by the whole "body switching" aspect, though having I-an (who isn't even officially identified as such until relatively well into the story) assume a new, and newly confusing, identity through a series of vignettes does little other than provide more "content" for the film's unabashed McGuffin. Once I-an "meets cute" (if having a knock down drag out fight qualifies as such) with Moon Jin-ah (Lim Ji-Yeon), and a number of brief but ultimately revelatory interstitial "visions" provide at least a bit of background information, Spiritwalker feels like it may be careening toward some kind of epic "Moishe the Explainer" sequence, though when that ostensibly arrives, it may end up providing more questions than answers.

Spiritwalker has evidently already been optioned for an English language remake, and it will be interesting to see if the feature film or the reboot of Quantum Leap arrives first. Unless, of course, neither materializes and we're all left waiting for — never mind.

Spiritwalker Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Spiritwalker is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Well Go USA with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.39:1 (kind of weirdly, the IMDb lists 2.41:1 as the original aspect ratio, which I frankly suspect is in error). The closing credits roll is largely in Korean, and the litany of logos at the end didn't have any cameras that I spotted, and I haven't been able to dredge up any authoritative technical information online, but I'm once again assuming a digital capture and 2K DI. This is yet another action adventure thriller type entry that can regularly ping pong between blue and yellow gradings, though in this particular instance, a lot of the yellow sequences in particular have a somewhat greenish cast, as can perhaps be made out in some of the screenshots I've uploaded to accompany this review. Detail levels are generally excellent throughout the palette changes (either due to lighting or grading). There are a bunch of quasi hallucinatory interstitial montages that are pretty hazy and ill defined, some of which have what I assume is an intentionally noisy appearance.

Spiritwalker Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Spiritwalker features robust DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 tracks in either the original Korean or an English dub (per Well Go USA's standard operating procedure, lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 tracks in each language are also included). I couldn't detect any real difference in the mixes or amplitude between the two tracks, and the English dub is actually pretty good as far as these things go, but I still opted to watch most of the film with the original Korean. A surplus of well executed sound effects regularly engages the side and rear channels, noticeably (and unsurprisingly) in some of the film's big set pieces, which include a number of outdoor environments, including some car chases. There's also some appealingly rumbly LFE that attends some of the action sequences. Dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly throughout. Optional English subtitles are available, and kind of interestingly a smattering of forced Korean subtitles show up in some very brief English language moments.

Spiritwalker Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Behind the Scenes (HD; 3:53)


• Action Trailer (HD; 00:53)


• Trailer (HD; 1:47)

Note: As tends to be the case with Well Go USA Blu-ray releases, the disc has been authored so that supplements follow one another automatically (so that clicking on Behind the Scenes is essentially a Play All button. The disc is also authored to automatically move on to trailers for other Well Go USA releases after the Trailer for this film plays. Those trailers for other Well Go USA releases also play automatically at disc boot up.

Additionally, packaging features a slipcover.

Spiritwalker Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Speaking of high falutin' literary types, writer and director Jae-geun Yoon is on hand in the brief making of featurette included on this disc as a supplement touting the film's ostensible exploration of "identity" and "self realization". That might seem to be wishful thinking based on the actual film's reliance on those aforementioned "thrilling" car chases, shoutouts and hand to hand combat. There's some interesting content here, but it's often pretty muddled and some of the film's lapses in logic are in their own way quantum leaps. Technical merits are solid for those who may be considering making a purchase.