TAE GUK GI: The Yin and Yang of Movie-making

Rating: 7/10 (1 June 2008)

TAE GUK GI: The Brotherhood of War contains not only some of the most effective images of war over filmed, but also some of the most stereotypical elements of movie-making.
First, the positive elements in this film. The scenes of combat are absolutely extraordinary. This is not your typical Hollywood sanitization of mutilation, death, and destruction. In this film the flesh and bone explode, metal fragments rip to pieces anything they touch, and dirt and rock fragments cover and lacerate everyone and everything. The realism of these scenes is astonishing.
It is also unique that the film depicts the horrors that both sides perpetrate on each other; both the North Koreans and South Koreans execute even their own civilians. Men, women, (and maybe children, too) are summarily murdered for politics, even if those politics were forced upon the populace by the enemy. This is total war between political ideologies; war without mercy. I can almost guarantee that this film could not have been made in South Korea during the years of the Pak Chung Hee dictatorship of the 1970's.
This film also portrays the heroism and fear of the infantry soldiers who must run into a storm of fire, metal, and explosive death, sometimes willingly, but often because their own officers and sergeants will kill them if they don't. This may be the Korean War of the 1950's, but it could just as easily have been the trench warfare of World War I. Just as bad, the film reveals that the military on both sides sanctions, tolerates, and even encourages the brutalization and murder of Prisoners of War, civilian hostages, and just ordinary people. (Sound familiar? Ever hear of someone on the winning side of a war ever being charged with a war crime? It wasn't likely then and, as we know, it isn't likely now.)
However, in contrast to the stunning battle scenes and the film's exposure of the horrors of war, the film also contains some really lackluster elements, especially in the musical score. The music is just Hollywood-style, manipulative, tearjerker stuff. The movie would have benefited from less music and by music that was more subdued and transparent. The movie also suffers from - at least to my western eyes - a soap opera quality in the relationship between the two brothers who are the main protagonists of the film. In the first place, I think the actor Won Bin was too "mature" (in his mid-20's or so) to play the 18-year old schoolboy younger brother. This is somewhat mitigated later in the film, as the horrors of war tend to age everyone involved. Secondly, there was too much speechifying between the brothers. Every one of their meetings seemed too dramatic, if not histrionic. Toward the end of the movie the histrionics bled over from the merely verbal and spread into the previously excellent action scenes. There seemed to be a palpable shift from the very plausible to the rather unlikely.
All in all, though, this is a very worthwhile film. It's eye-opening about war, provides insights into brutality that many of the powers that be would rather we not have, and evokes in us feelings of anger and sadness. This Korean-made film is a very fine effort.