Please save me

Rating: 3/10 (10 April 2005)

from the melodrama. 'Taegukgi' employs the 'Saving Private Ryan' storyline with a personal tragedy in a great war. Oh my oh my how the two brothers look like they've just fallen in love (in the beginning of the movie), I for one have never seen brothers like that. In style also this is very similar to SPR. Lots of blood splashing everywhere, enemy is portrayed as only evil, music very dramatic and story very tear dripping. For those who would see this Oscar nominated: Why? To show that Korean movies cant do better than to copy one of Hollywood's biggest recent successes? Korean film is so much more than that.
The films core messages lies in that they are one people and its crazy to fight ones own people. If so, then I find it confusing as to why the North Koreans are totally faceless except for the ones who deserted from the south. When one South Korean is killed, we see 20 North Koreans get blasted into bloody bits and I thought that the North Korean army was so much more powerful at that time. And the systematic killing of the civilians who enlisted as communists to get food when the capitalists couldn't give them anything, what was that about? To show that South Korea does not tolerate freedom of thought or have compassion? If it was to criticize the South Korean governing at the time, as with the drafting of both brothers, then the film shouldn't be so stereotyping the enemy. Honestly I don't think the Koreans were so black and white only five years after the divide, which most Koreans didn't care much about since they were one people.
The two main actors need to mature a little. Jin-seok especially is not the same character throughout the movie, most of the time he is thinking about the family at home and disliking his brothers medal hunt, but at the hospital for instance, he seems to be happy like he spent the last year on honeymoon at Cheju island. Jin-tae seems more on a quest for glory than for sending his brother home, then why is he so celebrated for the effort? Of course his brother loves him, but the changes come without proper motivation. Like close to the ending, he went nuts and ..? I am sorry to be so grumpy when I see so many people appreciate this movie so much and were really moved to tears by it, but I think it was to messy, tried to achieve to much with succeeding in little and too sugarcoated, Hollywood style. For a Korean audience who don't know American movies so well this may be a very well made movie and seem exotic, but for me this is not what I seek out as Korean cinema. See 'Silmido' instead.