Not Oldboy, not Saving Private Ryan, not very good...

Rating: 5/10 (10 October 2005)

I have to admit, I went into this film with very high expectations. I had just watched Oldboy, another film from South Korea, which blew my freakin' mind. It was incredible. I went looking all around for another South Korean film, but for months couldn't find one. And then this, a Top 250 movie, pops up on the shelf at Blockbuster. Boy, was I excited.
It's too bad, then, that the movie should turn out to be so painfully simple. The film makers assume you, the viewers, are idiots. There is an annoying abundance of authorial shots (a shot where your eye is lead to something so you don't miss it). These shots are okay when they are used to clear up a confusing part of a movie, but if you can't keep up with (if not get ahead of) the storyline of this film, well you, my friend, need help. The use of authorial shots is to make sure that you understand the theme; that good and bad are not so simple in war. A good theme for a film, which is ironically oversimplified.
I have heard many people say that this film depicts war in a realistic way that has never been seen before. Really? Like in the many Rambo scenes where Jin-tae takes on an entire army, miraculously dodging the cross hairs of, oh, so many soldiers? I have also heard that the North Koreans were, for the first time, depicted as humans. After watching this movie, I have to assume that movies before this depicted North Koreans as hamsters.
This movie mostly disappointed me because it was so Hollywood. It's everything I've come to expect from bad American movies, not from Top 250 foreign films. Go see Saving Private Ryan if you want a good war movie. Go see Oldboy if you want a good South Korean movie.