Volcano High’s amusing conceit is to transplant the Wu Xia film into a high school setting. It’s a entirely fantatacized high school setting that is contemporary but at the same belongs to no particular time – using sports teams instead of warring clans, where the librarian becomes the secret master, while adding searches for secret scrolls of power and wire-flying dances in the sports stadium. The martial arts moves, wire flying, virtual pans and so on are energetic, if slightly hackneyed moves – and moreover clearly looks like wire-work rather that the effortless suspension of disbelief that we see in the Hong Kong equivalents. That said director Kae gyun-kim demonstrates an enormous degree of assurance. For every Wu Xia Pan/Matrix-styled move he makes, he is constantly wittily undercutting it with tongue firmly planted in cheek. The pre-credits contains an hilarious parody of the scene in X-Men (2000) where Ian McKellen psychically holds bullets back in the air, with a teacher flinging a piece of chalking at Kyuk Jang and he freezing it stilled in front of his forehead. The film is visually abuzz with a dazzling and witty blend of split screen cutups, subtitles and visual cuts. Indeed Kae is a director who has a sponge-like ability to steal the latest, most up-to-date style from international counterparts, reprocess it with as much smartness as they do, and wittily spoof it and make it his own at the same time. All the cast give excellent performances, especially so Kyuk Jang whose balance between assured martial arts master and a gauche, goofy smile is side-splitting.

For all Kae’s assuredness of style, wit and virtuoso directorial skill, Volcano High falls short of being entirely a great film. Kae does not quite know when enough of a good thing is enough. The film, at 118 minutes, is overly long. In some ways it feels like a film and its sequel having been squeezed into one. The film spends the bulk of its time building Jang Ryang up as the villain and setting Kim Kyung-soo up to fight him as a classic underdog-discovers-his-innate-skill battle. But then about three-quarters of the way in, the film sidelines Jang Ryang and introduces the new threat of Mr Ma and the teachers. The final conflict with Jang Ryang is dismissed perfunctorily, while the freeing of Hak-kim from imprisonment is entirely forgotten about. The film could really have done entirely without the teachers and would have been better off for it – it would have been nearly half-an-hour shorter and the building up to the climactic confrontation with Jang Ryang would have served much more satisfyingly. That said the climax amid a stadium of exploding sprinklers is a moderately entertaining and the film itself eminently enjoyable and satisfying.