Revenge, redemption and family are the core dramatic elements of War of the Arrows, a beautiful historic action film out of South Korea.

Set during the Manchu invasions of Korea, a young boy is urged to take his younger sister and go before the attackers storm the city. From an overlooking hillside, he watches as their father is cut down, beheaded. His sister screams and draws the attention of men who are now looking for them. Dogs are sent after them, and the boy, Nam-yi, shows his skill with a bow as he fends them off. The two escape and make their way to their father's best friend.

Thirteen years later, Nam-yi is a very skilled archer. His sister, Ja-in, is going to marry. And as Nam-yi goes off hunting for deer, and to escape being at the wedding, he hears the rumble of an approaching army. When he makes it back to the village he finds many people slaughtered and his sister has been taken. The rest of the film follows his dogged pursuit of the soldiers.

As with many of these sorts of epic films out of Korea, the cinematography is stunning. And the action scenes are fantastic, the choreography so meticulous and yet free flowing. The sound production envelops you in the world the film has crafted. And the acting is superb.

The Blu-ray presentation is crisp and clear and beautiful. Though it is light on extras, it doesn't matter. It contains a couple trailers for the movie, a highlights reel of scenes from the film, and a behind the scenes look at the making of the War of the Arrows. There are both Korean and English audio tracks, as well as English subtitles. On the English audio, the dubbing isn't too terrible, but it has the flaws you would expect - people with accents that don't quite match, extra words thrown in and words occasionally dropped to match the length of lip movements - and is perfectly watchable if you would prefer not to read the film and don't understand Korean.

War of the Arrows is definitely worth watching.