Simple but impressive

Rating: 7/10 (31 May 2006)

There were a great many mixed reviews for Kang Je-guy's film. Several in England lambasted the film as being incredibly melodramatic, overacted, insistent in use of music and visual style, clichéd and manipulative. Less vitriolic ones praised the production values and physical qualities, but again said that this extremely populist film was sentimental and also all-too-obviously riffing on Western war films (in its nervy action scenes and framing narrative), such as Black Hawk Down and, in particular, Saving private Ryan.
I think this is a much better and more interesting film than a lot of people have allowed. There are detracting factors. It's long, self-consciously 'epic', features an OTT, bug-eyed performance from Jang Dong-kun, has a few ropey CGI effects and also has a rather simplistic metaphor for the Korean peninsular (the brothers being divided, natch).
But for all that, this is still a really impressive film. Amazingly shot at times and wearing its heart on its sleeve, it interesting to see commercial cinema be so committed to elucidating a trauma such as the Korean ware.
I think it is manipulative and a touch hypocritical in the way rejoices in its ability to blow stuff up, entertain but and then throw in some anguished scenes of family strife and depict atrocities against soldiers and civilians alike. However, the way it views South Korea as HOME, under attack from forces way beyond the sight of ordinary people is really persuasive; they may be off-the-shelf characters, yet they deserve out sympathy. Also, the way it depicts the Korea being thrust into a cruel modernity and onto the international stage, when all people want to do is prosper and be happy, is intriguing. Yes, its to progress, but did we really have to drub the hell out of other to do it?
The film's attitude to consumerism, capitalism and Westwern powers is mostly positive, but a touch ambiguous. The early scenes that depict a poor but healthy, industrious and extremely optimistic South Korea are a bit boring because they signal the carnage to come, but the film mourns this lost world, before politics and death intruded upon them.
This really is a film about ordinary people, and I like that. It may not be original, but the way it insists upon their situation at the mercy of ideologies, politicians we never see and almighty battles gives some idea of why it was so phenomenally successful in Korea: there's no grandstanding, just trying to survive. This is not historical film-making and history buffs won't benefit because there's no real analysis of the conflict's origins or development.
Taegukgi is extremely commercial, and hence bland at times, shallow even - because while it may show acts of murder and torture from both sides, it only shows those crimes and does not interrogate them.
But it's worth seeing for the scale of its vision, production values and for such a layman's view of fighting. At the very least it's an instructive lesson in bayonet-fencing: the scenes of trench-fighting are brutal as hell.