Newly released war movies have never seemed to sit well with me since Saving Private Ryan because the themes, emotion and action always seem rather bland nowadays, hardly the sensitivity a director wants his viewers going into his war film feeling. So seat Kang Je-gyu in the director's chair, give him an insanely high budget for a Korean film, the highest there is, and I get the strange sinking sensation that it's just another money grubbing film with another two and a half hours of soporific explosions and shooting. Not to say that it completely went against my expectations and presented something completely innovative and original (Je-gyu would be crazy to do that), but given the conflict, with a Korean perspective on a war we never see films about, Taegukgi does manage to garner up some interest to at the least, make the two and a half hours simply breeze by.
Two brotHERs, one an out-of-school shoe shiner with aspirations of owning a shop, the other, a younger 18 year old intelligent student, are both forcibly drafted into the South Korean army at the outbreak of war in 1950. Begrudgingly shipped off and unable to find a way out of it, the older brother, Jin-tae decides the best plan to get his younger brother, Jin-seok back home alive is to earn a medal of bravery himself, and gain the privilege in Return. Meanwhile, his less-war-accustomed brother begins to fear for Jin-tae's life and doubt the "selfless" actions with cynicism.
Given mainly two characters, their family back home and a couple supporting army characters, Taegukgi doesn't particularly care about creating an assortment of minor army buddies to tragically lose their lives slowly depleting the brotherhood that forms in their company. Instead, the film takes the brotherhood literally, and focuses on the tragic circumstances that affect Jin-tae and Jin-seok's relationship. Jin-tae, played by Jang Dong-Kun, resembles Chow Yun Fat now, more than ever, in a number of levels from his vague resemblance, to the character's selfless preservation and consideration for his brother's life. Male bonding no doubt. Jin-seok is played out very well by Won Bin, who does a perfect job of filling out the character change from his naïve and frail arrival to his hardened and aggressive spurts later on. The conflict that arises seems to be rather run-of-the-mill, war changing people into monsters, skimpy Heart of Darkness sort of stuff, but it continues to evolve into a third act that uses the presently unique Korean theme of brother against brother, North against South, Korean against Korean, to make a tragic example of this particular situation.
It's not to say that this movie is remarkably original though. We've seen this North-South conflict through human characters in Korean cinema before, but not in the epic proportions and detail boosted by the blatant commercialism of this film. It's something to expect though, if you're the director of Shiri, and it leads to some good, some bad. First the good. Thanks to the budget, we receive fantastically staged battles that rarely go easy on the explosions, gory bursts of flesh and painfully never-ending machine gun fire that puts you straight into the trench. Complete with a shaky chaotic camera, it's safe to say it works, even if it is unpleasant and derivative of fight scenes you've seen before. The constructions of the sets is remarkable too, with several battle sites, a couple nice changes to in-city battles such as Pyongyang, and nice attention to complex detail. All things you might not find particularly special if accustomed to war films, but something that is rather new for Korean cinema at the moment. With the big budget though, comes the safe bets and usual themes and script that can plague war films to truly make it a hell. Along with the character change of a hardening and desensitization to the killings, comes unbelievable situations, repetitive dialogue filler and some contrived aspects that are impossible to ignore. The first comes with convenient enemy misses when the script calls for it. With the early theme that anyone next to you can simply bite it the next second (something illustrated quite explicitly), it feels rather outlandish when characters fearlessly get up and dodge enemy fire when necessary. Also, the early scenes before the war starts are filmed in a blissfully light tone that showcases characters enjoying the little things in life like popsicles and splashing each other in the water. It's almost a given that once a character says, "I want everyday to be like this, no more or no less" that this is going to be used for a montage later on, and when you see something coming from that far away, it loses its effect completely. Je-gyu takes several safe bets like the soldier proudly passing around pictures of his loving family that he wishes to Return to, or the recurring conversation and argument provoked by Jin-seok, self-conscious about his perceived child-hood and the responsibility he has to his older-brother. These wind up relatively hit or miss, depending on what you fancy, but chances are if you've seen enough of this genre, you'll notice the war movie cliche easily.
So in the end, what's Taegukgi got going for it? Well it's entertaining, and a tearjerker no doubt, and on the surface for some people, that may be all you need. While some battles can be slightly more annoying than they should, your concern for the characters should be enough to hold the film together. The film seems to exist for little aesthetic or thought-provoking reasons, that could almost create the label of a Michael Bay film, had the characters been less developed and the themes non-existent. What held me over the most were those two things, and the added uniqueness of setting this in the Korean war with the touch of communism in particular plot points to make it more than just battles and deaths. If this film had been transcribed to World War II though (with the applicable changes), then god help us all. It would have then been...Windtalkers.
~ Tuna
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