Showing posts with label korean war. Show all posts
Showing posts with label korean war. Show all posts

Friday, September 8, 2017

Review: OPERATION CHROMITE, A Soulless, Calculated Cashgrab


By Pierce Conran

Summer in Korea guarantees a few things, hot humid days, the loud whir of cicadas and the guaranteed release of a jingoistic cashgrab. Recent summers have gifted us with Roaring Currents and Northern Limit Line and last year followed suit by treating us to Operation Chromite. Featuring a tacked on performance by global star Liam Neeson, this Korean War offering might have been more egregious had its clearly venal nature not been so readily apparent the moment the project was announced.

Thursday, May 14, 2015

Review: TAEGUKGI: THE BROTHERHOOD OF WAR is a Heartbreaking Tale from the Korean War


By Chris Horn

You would be hard-pressed to find a more compelling and difficult to portray subject than war. Having successfully proven himself with his 1999 action film Shiri, director Kang Je-gyu once more took a look at the breakout of violence between North and South Korea in Taegukgi: The Brotherhood of War. While comparisons to Saving Private Ryan (1998) are inevitable, Taegukgi cuts to the heart of a different kind of war with less clearly defined lines and much more personal stakes for its characters.

Monday, February 23, 2015

Review: WELCOME TO DONGMAKGOL Is a Surreal Anti-War Drama


By Chris Horn

There is perhaps no region better suited to make a unique anti-war film than Korea, a country itself split and in a constant state of escalated threats of renewed warfare. Not quite content to make a film weighed down by excessive melodrama, new director Park Kwang-hyun made a splash in 2005 with his quirky, surreal adaptation of Jang Jin’s well-regarded play Welcome to Dongmakgol. Though imperfect, this feature film debut ultimately proves more memorable than most other anti-war films that pile on the misery.

Monday, August 27, 2012

KOFFIA 2012: The Front Line (고지전, Gojijeon) 2011


Part of MKC's coverage of the 3rd Korean Film Festival in Australia (previously published).

Before getting into a discussion about Jang Hoon’s much-ballyhooed new feature The Front Line, I feel that I should mention that over the years I have had a troubled relationship with war films.  I have seen all kinds, from different eras, different countries, detailing different fights, and espousing all sorts of different points of view.  On a cold Sunday afternoon, there isn’t a whole lot that can beat a repeat viewing of seminal classics like David Lean’s The Bridge on the River Kwai (1956), John Sturges’ The Great Escape (1963), or Billy Wilder’s Stalag 17 (1953).  Those are actually all POW (Prisoner of War) films but there is a great wealth of others that I can always return to, including: Masaki Kobayashi’s The Human Condition trilogy (1959-1961), Kon Ichikawa’s The Burmese Harp (1956) and Fires on the Plain (1959), Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979) or HBO’s 10-part mini-series Band of Brothers (2001).

When the elements fall into place, a good war film is one of the most engaging types of entertainment across any medium but that correct balance is a difficult thing to achieve.  War films differ from other genres as they are naturally rooted in spectacle, feature little to no romance or indeed female protagonists, and must frequently sacrifice characters on the battlefield.  What’s more, rather than following a personal trajectory, the main thrust of the narrative is often consumed by a story far greater than the leads that we are to bond with on screen.

Sunday, April 22, 2012

The Front Line (고지전, Gojijeon) 2011


Before getting into a discussion about Jang Hoon’s much-ballyhooed new feature The Front Line, I feel that I should mention that over the years I have had a troubled relationship with war films.  I have seen all kinds, from different eras, different countries, detailing different fights, and espousing all sorts of different points of view.  On a cold Sunday afternoon, there isn’t a whole lot that can beat a repeat viewing of seminal classics like David Lean’s The Bridge on the River Kwai (1956), John Sturges’ The Great Escape (1963), or Billy Wilder’s Stalag 17 (1953).  Those are actually all POW (Prisoner of War) films but there is a great wealth of others that I can always return to, including: Masaki Kobayashi’s The Human Condition trilogy (1959-1961), Kon Ichikawa’s The Burmese Harp (1956) and Fires on the Plain (1959), Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979) or HBO’s 10-part mini-series Band of Brothers (2001).

When the elements fall into place, a good war film is one of the most engaging types of entertainment across any medium but that correct balance is a difficult thing to achieve.  War films differ from other genres as they are naturally rooted in spectacle, feature little to no romance or indeed female protagonists, and must frequently sacrifice characters on the battlefield.  What’s more, rather than following a personal trajectory, the main thrust of the narrative is often consumed by a story far greater than the leads that we are to bond with on screen.

More and more I find myself apprehensive when I hear about a new war film since I don’t think they make them as well as they used to.  Regarding past conflicts like WWII and Vietnam, it feels like most of the great films have already been made.  The immediacy has past and while revisionism and objectivism can motivate new and interesting views on these military operations, for the most part, the ‘epic’ feel of these past films is a rare achievement in today’s cinematic landscape.


Before watching The Front Line, my expectations were mixed.  On the one hand it is Jang Hoon’s third film and his previous two, Secret Reunion (2010) and especially Rough Cut (2008), have been great films.  On the other, it is a war film and, as I have outlined, my relationship with these is problematic.  More troubling still was the mixed reaction it received from many critics and cinephiles whose opinion I trust, although it also received significant industry recognition, including Best Film accolades at the Daejong Film Awards and the Critics’ Choice Awards, which somewhat offset my reservations.

In 1953 during the Korean war, lengthy negotiations are underway for a ceasefire, while the fight rages on for the Aerok Hill, the possession of which switches endlessly between the North and the South.  After a company commander of the South Korea army is found dead as a result of friendly fire, Kang Eun-pyo (Shin Ha-kyun) is sent to the front line to investigate.  He meets a friend there, Kim Soo-hyeok (Ko Soo), who he assumed had died but has in fact turned into a seasoned soldier.  The whole company is battle-hardened and due to significant casualties the officers are youths who have long since lost their innocence.  Alligator company continues to wage war for a small hill as the peace talks drag on, with no end in sight.

There is a steadily growing canon of Korean War films (to be clear I mean those made by Koreans) which include Taegukgi (2004), Welcome to Dongmakgol (2005), and 71: Into the Fire (2010).  As it happens, these are all great films but they are also heavily focused on the relationship between North and South Korea, though less explicitly in the case of 71.  Such a thematic strand is inevitable but it is also unique.  It serves to separate Korean war films from other military oeuvres.  The Front Line deals with this issue head-on from a stance that seeks to call to mind the futility of war, the archetypal theme of the war film.  While it addresses this theme effectively it can’t be said to be too original, I preferred Taegukgi’s unsubtle but apt metaphor of brothers being torn apart which paralleled the much larger proceedings surrounding them, one, by the way, which is rehashed in here in the relationship between Eun-pyo and Soo-hyeok


Park Sang-yeon’s script is grandiloquent in its exploration of this theme, brimming with pithy aphorisms such as “The whole world is telling us to fight, but this fog is telling us not to” and “Do you know why you're losing? Because you don't know why you're fighting”.  We are so accustomed to anti-war messages that when heavy-handed interjections such as these come along they tend to come off as trite.  War films are a worthwhile form of entertainment but they need to have more to express than this oft-mined topic.  The problem is that The Front Line feels like a chamber piece where this one motif reverberates off of everything, drubbing you with its ethical superiority.

Furthermore, the single location used for the bulk of the film, despite numerous styles and visual tricks used to render it more interesting, reinforce this feeling of it being a chamber piece.  The film feels small, though perhaps deliberatly so as Jang aims for a claustrophobic atmosphere in the battlefield and frequently breaks rules of spacial mapping which serve to disorient us.  Despite this, the battles scenes are often impressive, a number of great tracking shots and large, magnificent canvasses are extremely effective.  

The Front Line is well made and features some stunning production design as well as some strong cinematography, I particularly liked the heavy Dutch tilts of some of the shots.  By and large though, it feels like a missed opportunity.  Jang exhibits a sure hand as a filmmaker but his big style can't overcome a disappointing script, especially as it segues into a mawkish and protracted finale after giving us a false climax.  The film is well worth a watch though, for some strong performances, especially from Shin Ha-kyun and Lee Je-hoon, and some very convincing set pieces.

The Cine-Asia release of The Front Line is out on DVD/Blu-ray February 27 in the UK.


★★★☆☆


Reviews and features on Korean film appear regularly on Modern Korean Cinema.  For film news, external reviews, and box office analysis, take a look at the Korean Box Office UpdateKorean Cinema News and the Weekly Review Round-up, which appear weekly on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings (GMT+1).

To keep up with the best in Korean film you can sign up to our RSS Feed, like us on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter.

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

In Love and the War (Jeokkwaui Dongchim) 2011

The villagers look on as North Korea invades

Since Korean cinema reemerged at the end of the 1990s one of the most popular topics it has mined has been the division of the peninsula.  Many credit Kang Je-gyu’s Shiri (1999) as the blockbuster that brought about a renaissance in Korean film.  Personally I believe that the industry was already reviving before this but Shiri certainly was the perfect storm that toppled box office records and made the world stand up and take notice.  As well as being the highest-budgeted Korean film up until that point ($8.5 million), Shiri was also a technical spectacle modeled on Hollywood action films which incorporated melodrama, perhaps more importantly, it was focused on North Korea.  A year later, Joint Security Area (2000), Park Chan-wook’s debut and an even more complex view on the relationship between North and South Korea, once again set the box office alight, beating Shiri’s record for Seoul admissions but falling just short on the national level.  The gangster film Friend reached new heights in 2001 and the next two films to break the record came in quick succession in late 2003/early 2004.  The first of these was Kang Woo-suk’s Silmido, telling the story of a group of South Korean convicts being trained to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Il-sung in the late 1960s.  It was the first film to cross the 10 million admissions mark but was overtaken in a matter of weeks by Kang Je-gyu’s follow-up to Shiri, the enormous Korean war blockbuster Taegukgi.  Kang’s film followed brothers of the South Korean army who are eventually separated as one joins the North.

There is no question that the representations of North Korea often translate into box office success but these have changed over time.  2011 has given us a lot of films dealing with the North, more so than usual.  While some have been typical large-scale productions like Jang Hoon's The Front Line there have also been a number of smaller scale films tackling representations of the North from new angles, including Juhn Jai-hong's Poongsan and Park Jung-bum’s independent hit The Journals of Musan.  One film that falls between these two ends of the spectrum is In Love and the War (aka Sleeping With the Enemy), a melodramatic war comedy in the vein of Welcome to Dongmakgol (2005), another enormously successful North Korea-themed blockbuster.

Kim Jung-woong's platoon marches in

A quaint village in the southern part of the Korean peninsula goes about its business during the Korean war.  The locals are preparing for Sul-hee’s (Jung Ryeo-won) wedding when a North Korean military platoon, led by Kim Jung-woong (Kim Ju-hyeok), invades.  Sul-hee’s suitor, a member of the anti-communist youth league, flees with his family during the night.  Jung-woong sees himself as a liberator and the villagers, in order to ensure their safety, kowtow to their oppressors.  Sul-hee is strong-willed and is less gracious in her welcome.

You can guess how the rest of the film plays out which makes the 135 minute running time daunting but normally this kind of narrative succeeds on the basis of its details and characters rather than much originality from the direction that the story and intended moral focus will take.  Welcome to Dongmakgol was very successful with this tactic:  it began with an original and improbable conceit and after having introduced its great characters, it relied on them, good set pieces, and witty humor rather than the story which can only play out in one way.  Sadly, In Love and the War does not feature the same caliber of protagonists and suffers greatly because of its uneven tone.  It’s a war film, a drama, a comedy, and also a romance but rather than blend these elements throughout the narrative, separate scenes distinctly occupy one territory and clash with each other.

Jung Ryeo-won as Sul-hee

Much of the fault lies with the script, from Bae Se-young (Bronze Medalist, 2009; The Recipe, 2010), which, in its attempt to portray conflicting ideologies in a novel way, ends up humanizing, in cloying melodramatic fashion, everyone staying in the village during the occupation, while demonizing all that stand outside its borders.  I understand the need for us to empathize with the principal characters by streamlining the motivations of the antagonizing agents of action but here the paradox of the mutable ideologies of these protagonists versus the draconian dogmas of the outsiders strains credulity to breaking point.  Granted Welcome to Dongmakgol is guilty of this as well but it is less transparent and benefits from much better character progressions as a result of Jang Jin’s fine writing.

Also to blame is Park Keon-hong’s heavy-handed direction.  In his film, Park does not demonstrate a strong knowledge or understanding of film style, the mise-en-scene is only fleshed-out for the overwrought melodramatic peaks of the narrative and this, if anything, serves to undermine them as they seem to belong to a different film.  One of the reasons that Korea has been so successful in blending genres is its frequent ability to forge an exemplary and unified style and atmosphere through film production techniques, that way the oscillating themes, tones, and emotions can exist within the same framework.  Good examples of this include Jang Joon-hwan’s Save the Green Planet (2003) and Bong Joon-ho’s The Host (2006).  This is a trait that In Love and the War is sorely lacking.

Yu Hae-jin, Byun Hee-bong, and Shin Jeong-keun

The strongest point of the film has to be its ensemble cast, filled with veteran bit players and emerging stars.  Kim Ju-hyeok (The Servant, 2010) does well in his role even if he is a little dry but Jung Ryeo-won (Castaway on the Moon, 2009) is excellent as usual, she has gone from strength to strength in her career and I look forward to her being offered meatier parts.  The supporting cast, comprising of Yu Hae-jin (The Unjust; Moss, both 2010), Kim Sang-ho (Moby Dick, 2011), Byun Hee-bong (Memories of Murder, 2003; The Host), and Shin Jeong-keun (Running Turtle, 2009; Blades of Blood, 2010), are all wonderful, even if the script calls on them to overact from time to time.  I only wish this great cast had been given more defined characters and stronger dialogue.

Perhaps In Love and the War is a worthy experiment but as a narrative feature it ultimately fails due in part to its disparate ideas but mainly because it lacks restraint and balance.  However I will say that I was enjoying the film until the third act but at that point the film completely floundered, the climax is beyond absurd and frankly a bit of an embarrassment.  Given the film's anemic performance at the Korean box office, I imagine others felt the same way.



Reviews and features on Korean film appear regularly on Modern Korean Cinema.  For film news, external reviews, and box office analysis, take a look at the Korean Box Office UpdateKorean Cinema News and the Weekly Review Round-up, which appear weekly on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings (GMT+1).

To keep up with the best in Korean film you can sign up to our RSS Feed, like us on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter.