You won't crack open a watermelon anytime soon!

Rating: 9/10 (29 June 2015)

Hi! In case you haven't read up on your World History, we're still at war with North Korea. We basically signed an Armistice Treaty, back in 1953 to stop shooting each other point blank in the face and on the news of current events. This Instant Classic War Movie, TAE GUK GI (The Brotherhood of War) succeeds in showing us the "true grit" of what urban open head exploding (like watermelons) street by street warfare looks like. Directed by Kang Je-Gyu, this bullet loud numbing graphic war celluloid piece freely tells a heavy one sided story from a South Korean point of view (the North Communists are seen mainly as a small but evil empire). I'm painfully reminded (as an American), in the major scene where the Chinese Army joins the bloody fray with North Korea, that this force multitude of hundreds of red enemy assailants scouring over a hill like army ants, must have been dead similar to what the lone guard Brave Texans (standing tall next to the likes of Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie) saw coming at them while defending The Alamo in 1836 against Gen. Santa Ana's 3000 plus Army.
TAE GUK GI focuses it's blood smeared camera lens on two Brothers Jin Tae and Lee Jin Seok. One struggles to maintain his humanity and sense of universal justice, in the midst of battle, while the other Brother mentally transforms himself into a fear-no-bullet "Super Saiyan" (like Dragon Ball Z) on the battlefield, in a desperate bold plan to get his younger Brother sent home early (to help survive the Family Name). Other talented Supporting Characters "fly in and fly out" like rice thrown in your face, but they stick in your memory, with their longing eyes, funny remarks, and cold blooded commanders. The Mom, the Wife to be, the soldier comrades, the wry weary Captains, and the Kids, all evolve and revolve around the two South Korean Brothers.
On a technical military note, it was interesting to see propeller driven Pre-Jet Age Allied Aircraft "raining down death" with their WWII mounted machine guns (probably still oiled up from fighting the Japanese approx 5 years earlier). And you don't even see the American Allied Army until 2/3rds into the action. What we're fed here is a steady dose of humane mental anguish and desperation to stay sane while absorbing the fateful costs of hunger forced made decisions. All of which bring us to today's Armistice with North Korea. We still look at each other, everyday, with loaded modern guns on each side of a barbed wire fence at the 38th Parallel. How many lives would change, in this generation, between Brothers, Family, and Friends, if one side decides to "open fire" all over again?