Kang Je-kyu's big-budgeted WWII melodrama offers up a kitschy, overtly violent tale about two rival marathon runners caught in a continent-hopping battle of blood, guts and bad dialogue.

[Director Kang Je-kyu] engineers one long pummel session of elaborate CGI effects, shaky battle cinematography and trial-by-fire heroics, but the nonstop adversity lacks any real sense of danger. Or, for that matter, emotional punch.

This is big-boned, epic filmmaking of a variety Cecil B. DeMille or D.W. Griffith would appreciate.

The film runs for almost two and a half hours and features some brutal scenes of combat, but the acting is fine and the locations, scouted for two years and shot over almost six months, are stunning.