Tae Guk Gi: The Brotherhood of War Reviews

''Jin-tae: [pulls out Jin-seok's pen that he lost] I found this in the fire. I've been holding onto this for you.
Jin-seok: Give it to me... when I see you again.''

''I wish this was all just a dream. I want to wake up in my bed, and over breakfast, I'd tell you that I had a strange dream. Then I would go to school, and you and mom would go to work.''

Early, one Sunday Morning, in late June of the year 1950, was the beginning of a terrible turbulent conflict that would rip a people apart. Thousands of casualties, a whole unity of a nation being the biggest of all. Korea, a country still plagued by a guilty past, divided even to this day.
Told through the eyes of Jin-tae Lee, played by
Dong-Kun Jang and younger brother Jin-seok Lee played by Bin Won , who go to war and are cruelly ripped from their family and become embroiled in a war North against South.



The acting is sensational, the cinematography perfect, the battle sequences rivaling Saving Private Ryan and Letters from Iwo Jima possibly even surpassing them.

How do you criticize a masterpiece?
Answer is you cannot.

Raw brutality, compelling humanity and even inhumanity. Emotional, powerful, shocking and some of the greatest scenes that had me getting teary eyed and come the film's climax... Emotional.
Ideologies, communism and capitalist imperialism are dissected and analysed. This film shows them for what they are: dangerous when implemented in a corrupted fashion. There's always a cause of war ranging from religious beliefs/persecution to glorious idealistic propaganda.
A gripping tale and account of two brothers and the meaning of sacrifice.
In my opinion it is the greatest brutal raw emotional film seen recently.
Still haunted by Jin-seok standing over the bones at the end and all the senseless killing, families divided, this demands to be watched.

The film’s most harrowing moments are constrained to the first 40 minutes, where Jin-tae and Jin-seok arrive on the front lines fresh from the train they were forced on. It’s a bleak, muddy, dangerous, and fragile hill, but no more so than the men trying desperately to hold it. Later, the film’s aesthetics brighten up a bit as we follow the unit as they push into North Korea, through Pyongyang, and to the Chinese border. The film caps off with a gigantic epic military engagement on a hillside along the 38th parallel that ends with the two factions caught up in a bloody, brutal, group fight. It’s all incredibly executed, utterly and completely chaotic.

Reminiscent of all war movies, “Taegukgi” has many characters and limited time. Thus, their deaths mean we often didn't get to know them deeply, and the only reason we take their deaths as significant is because the musical score has suddenly become emotionally and powerfully charged. That guy that keeps showing his fellow soldiers a picture of his family. If you can’t figure out this guy is going to bite it, and that his precious picture will poetically flutter, fall, or come into view during his death, you haven’t seen nearly enough war movies.

The acting by the two leads is versatile, although Dong-Kun Jang, who was excellent as a brooding cop in the average “2009: Lost Memories”, falls victim to a script that fails to give him very much complexity. Bin Won (“Guns and Talks”) does well enough, managing to be convincing as the naive schoolboy who grows up as the war churns on. Still, the character wavers from helpless schoolboy to uncompromising schoolboy too many times to be overly sympathetic. The script has positive and negative qualities based on previous factors, which offers boldly drawn characters that “grow” in Polaroid moments with spalshes of crimson and energy.

For brotherhood, for family, for love shining through and a journey of emotion and epic proportions.

After seeing this in Asda for less than £10 I was instantly drawn to it due to my unassailable desire to watch every single war film ever made and my love of a cheap DVD. This bargain stuck out like a Commie in a Nazi rally.

After a few minutes of setting the scene with the customary happy home life of the brothers and the habitual flash forward which is almost a guarantee in any mediocre war film since Pearl Harbour, I did not have too greater hope for the usually generic and predictable plot these films almost always offer. However this is where the story started to unfold and as soon as the Brothers are drafted and forced into battle it is clear that this is no two a penny 'shoot em up' making a quick buck from the tragedy of war.

The battle scenes are as bloody and as brutal as some of the best films in the genre, and is as well shot as its more prestigious predecessors. Nothing seems to be done at long range, with most of the butchery done with a bayonet giving the film a ferocity and barbarism that the boys in Hollywood often fail to capture.

On top of the explosions and fervour of battle that is a must have in the modern war film, the human tale is well scripted and not overplayed. Lee Jin-Tae and Lee Jin-Seok are clearly changed by war and the climax of the film reflects this in an awe inspiring weaving of hardcore action and human emotion. The scripting is second to none and gives a genuine emotional attachment to the characters portrayed within what can only be described as a Hellish war and a fantastic story of courage and sacrifice.