it's losing me

Rating: 6/10 (30 January 2009)

This movie is positively weird. Literally. It begins just like any other grand war movie - little irony, not much social commentary. For instance, there's no talk of the ROK authorities, about Li Sung-man's *slightly* corrupt power wielding and so on. On the other hand, the truth is all there: after all, the protagonists don't represent some imaginary underclass, but exactly the typical South Koreans. One brother works so that the other may learn. Then, the war begins, and the elder brother decides to save his younger kin by joining in the same unit and embarking on a struggle for top distinctions. But he is mistreated - his fiancée is proclaimed communist (because she took part in some communist meetings - "for food"), and when he and his brother stand up against the ruthless anti-communist court, they also become communists in the eyes of the authorities. The elder brother, convinced of his younger brother's death (his girl has already been killed) joins the KPA to fight corrupt ROK (it isn't stated but that's how it can be read). When he recognizes his mistake, it's too late and he pays for it with his life. Now, the problem is that the story itself is very hieratic - big words and all. Yet, there is a curious underpinning to it all. What if we see Jin-tae's death as something that was a given from the beginning? That he was dead already when he joined ROK forces? That his struggle for a medal is supposed to help his brother is good enough, but quite soon it becomes a struggle not for the brother, but for himself. What we see in his actions is an uncommon amount of hatred - where did it come from? Maybe it's the war: that KPA's attack had him leave his fiancée, spend the prescribed day of their wedding on the front line? Or it's him, his powerlessness - he was constantly paying with his life: for his brother's education, his family's well-being... That this tension is unresolved bears on the movie heavily, but without it, it would be utterly worthless, a simple revision of the same old war story. What I liked in the movie was that the communists have no faces. The only communists we see are the officers - or the South Koreans compulsorily enlisted in the KPA after the invasion. This gives the war an unreality: it is not a struggle between men, but between men and an impersonal mass - ideology itself? The war is shown ruthlessly, though I'm afraid the authors of the movie overstepped the actual history quite a few times. I'm not so sure it wasn't the UN forces that took Pyongyang; also, I thought there was no battle for the communist capital, as the KPA has already withdrawn, lacking strength to push the allies back. Although the Chinese and the Americans are in the war already for some time, the final battle is solely between Koreans - is that how it turned out? One of the truths about this war is that most of the significant battles were fought by foreign armies, not by Koreans. This is not to say that there were no Korean soldiers, but they were used to less compelling tasks. Another thing - isn't an F-86 a jet fighter? Because in the final battle, we're told that "F-86 are ready," and the ones that come are propellers. Anyway, this isn't bad, but there are a few things to consider before it's marked as a "masterpiece" - which it (sadly) isn't.