Along with Legend of the Mountain, Raining in the Mountain is one of two films made in South Korea by Hu acting as an independent filmmaker. While not a martial arts film, it looks back to the director’s earlier trilogy of “inn films.” Having used the country inn as a hive of skullduggery, Hu here turns to a Buddhist monastery as his theater of action. While various monks conspire among themselves to succeed the departing abbot, a general and an aristocrat hire competing thieves to steal an ancient sutra hidden in the monastery’s library. Hu skillfully contrasts the ceaseless intriguing, greed and ambition of the characters in the labyrinthine sets with the Buddhist principle of renunciation, represented by the expansive landscapes of the film’s opening and closing.