Tae Guk Gi - The Brotherhood of War
A big, bruising epic of the Korean War,Tae Guk Gismashed box-office records when it played in South Korea in 2004, almost as though the country needed to re-live the trauma at a 50-year distance. For the rest of the world,  this movie looks like a ground-level reckoning in a melodramatic key, with an authentic feel for battle lines as well as home front.Tae Guk Gifollows two brothers--one uneducated and forceful, the other intellectual and reserved--as they are united and then divided by the conflict. The broadly emotional story has some of the power of tales of the American Civil War, when family members found themselves on opposite sides of a battle. Director Kang Je-gyu , who made the lively female-assassin hitShiri, takes a blunt approach to the material (including aSaving Private Ryan-style framing device). And at 150 minutes, he has plenty of time for head-splitting, blood-spraying combat. This movie is meant as a punch in the stomach, and it connects.--Robert Horton