Lee Seungmoo

Born in South Korea on April 20th 1963, Lee Seungmoo is a well-known Korean film director. Lee Seungmoo is the son of a well-known book writer and critic, Lee O-Young, who is famous for his books like, Things Korean and The General’s Beard. Seungmoo has two siblings- Lee Gang-mu and Min-a Yi. Seungmoo completed his graduation from New York University in the USA where he majored in cinema studies and filmmaking.

After graduation, he returned to Korea and became the founding partner of a film school in Korea. Seungmoo became a teacher and started teaching the students of film school of which he was a founding partner. But Lee also had a passion for writing, so he started writing a screenplay. Earlier, he titled the screenplay as The Laundry Boy but later on he changed the title to The Warrior’s Way. It took him almost ten years to write the screenplay of his debut movie. The idea of a laundry man being a slaughterer struck to Lee when was pursuing cinema studies at NYU.

Lee wanted to make a movie but also knew the drawbacks of making a film for the first time. Limitations such as a low budget and to direct a less imaginative film, came along his way. The casting was also very difficult for Lee. Lee’s movie had actors and actresses from Korea, Hollywood, Hong Kong, and Australia. Actors like Jeoffrey Rush, Dong Gon, Kate Bosworth Kate Bosworth is an actress and model hailing from >> Read More... , and Danny Huston Danny Huston was born in Rome, Italy on 14th May 1 >> Read More... were all from different cultural backgrounds which led to the making of a cross-cultural tale.

Initially, Lee was very nervous as there is a misconception surrounding the Hollywood actors that they never listen to their directors and are very dominating. But Lee had a good time on the sets with all the actors and everybody gave him the importance of being a director. Lee also found it tough to direct a movie in English as he is from Korea and English is not his mother tongue. According to him, it would have been really easy for him to work as a filmmaker of a Korean movie.

The Warrior’s Way was released in the year 2010 which focused on the conflict between the East and the West. This movie is the combination of both Western culture and martial arts. The movie has the perfect amount of action scenes, and Lee directed it in such a beautiful way that the action element doesn’t go overboard. Most of the film’s shooting was done in New Zealand and it had a rating of 6.3 on IMDb.