The mixture of good script and acting..Brilliant exposition of Korean tragedy.

Rating: 10/10 (27 July 2006)

The focal point of the film is the development of brotherhood between Jin-tae and Jin-seok. The two brothers were played by Giang-Dong Gun as Jin-tae and Won Bin as Jin-seok. They began as two innocent suburb boys, and ended up in two rival soldiers.
What i most impressed by the film is the argument of the director on brotherhood. During the movie, Jin-tae - the elder brother, had acted consistently in the name of brotherhood. The brotherhood gave him the order to protect his younger brother - easy to understand for asians as the eldest brother inherited the role of decease father. The order brought him bravery and triumphs in battle, that eventually even awarded him the Medal of Honor which enabled him to send his younger brother home. But it costed his own soul. Jin-seok even denied him as his brother when witnessed the bloodthirsty animal within Jin-tae. However, their brotherhood was something unchangeable under any circumstances. Jin-tae was a hero of South Korea army, then, turned into the hero of its very opposite - the North army. Jin-seok was a South soldier, then, a surrender to the North army. They changed their position in the war quite rapidly without thinking of the war itself, but of their brotherhood. Their inner sense of brotherhood made Jin-tae feel not guilty when killing people both South and North soldiers; made Jin-seok unashamedly fight back and even betray his own army. This sense seemed to be driven both by instinct as expressed by Jin-tae and by sensation as expressed by Jin-seok. At the end of the movie, both motivations get its peaks - both Jin-tae and Jin-seok got mad when facing each other in their own fight. The moment when they nearly killed each other, the brotherhood woke up and brought them desire to get out of the war. It was like a tragedy that they tried their best to escape. Jin-tae even thought of surrender and fired against his own men, Jin-seok retreated to the South with a naive hope to reunite with his brother. Indeed, they was lost in their own thought of brotherhood, of reunion, of family and of post-war life. Though both brother fought bravely in the war, none of brothers ever talked of the war, its motivation or its end. The war did not bring them anything good, but the lost of brotherhood, the first time is the spiritual lost when Jin-tae exchanged his human soul for Medal of Honor of the South army, and the second time, the physical lost when Jin-tae passed away by the North bullets. It is the Korean tragedy. By emphasizing on their actions in vain to retain their brotherhood, the director made us understand of Korean struggle to regain the brotherhood at large again; as well as a dream that it will come, at the end.