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 aegukgi" is the big-budget South Korean war
film everyone has been waiting for, rumored to be the most expensive
production in Korean movie history. No big surprise, considering
writer/director Je-gyu Kang ("Shiri")
only knows how to do things two ways: big and bigger. "Taegukgi"
is without a doubt a nationalistic movie (the film's Korean title translates
into something along the lines of "wave the Korean flag"), the kind of big-budget spectacle you'd
find on the resume of one Michael Bay. Mind you, not that there's anything
wrong with that. Although one should be tempered to not expect anything too
original or subtle. Je-gyu Kang just doesn't work that way, as
"Shiri" can certainly attest to.
"Taegukgi" opens in the
present, but quickly flashes back to 1950 Seoul, with the Korean War about
to fall on the heads of the film's two main characters -- brothers Jin-tae
(Dong-Kun Jang), a shoeshine boy with aspirations of becoming a shoemaker,
and Jin-seok (Bin Won), the bookworm highschooler. As the de facto head of
the family, it's Jin-tae's responsibility to take care of his brother, a
responsibility he cherishes. Together, they live with their ailing mother
and Jin-tae's fiancée, Young-shin (Eun-ju Lee). Though they are poor and
struggling, it's nevertheless a very good life.
Alas, nothing good lasts forever. No sooner do we see
the idyllic lifestyle of our heroes does the Korean War breaks out. The
family is quickly separated and Jin-seok and Jin-tae find themselves
forcibly conscripted to fight. In the battlefields, Jin-tae takes on the
task of guardian angel, quickly adjusting to the squalid circumstances of
trench life. To garner favors and save his brother, Jin-tae volunteers for
dangerous missions, hoping to win the Medal of Honor so he can get
Jin-seok sent home. This causes conflict between the brothers, as Jin-seok
begins to (justly) take exception to Jin-tae's treatment of him as a
helpless child.
Without a doubt, "Taegukgi" is a visually
impressive film, but that doesn't negate the fact that you've seen it all
before. In particular "Saving
Private Ryan", the movie that "Taegukgi" was heavily
inspired by. One even suspects that Je-gyu Kang uses the same bookending
technique similar to the one used by "Ryan" as an admission that
without Spielberg's movie his wouldn't have been possible. Unfortunately
it's the script for "Taegukgi" that is the film's weakest
element. The movie is over two hours and 30 minutes long, with a massive
second act and an equally arduous concluding act. It makes
"Taegukgi" somewhat unwieldy, not to mention poorly paced.
Then again, I think it's probably enough to say that
"Taegukgi" does what it does extremely well, even if it has no
real originality and is basically treading the same ground as countless
other war films ("The
Thin Red Line", the 10-hour "Band
of Brothers", and the Finnish war film "Winter
War" all comes to mind.) As such, one could conclude that
"Taegukgi" is about 5 years too late to the party. Then again,
the action scenes alone are worth watching the film. The scenery is
spectacular and properly epic in proportions, with limbs and blood flying
with chaotic clockwork. Technically speaking, "Taegukgi" is
excellent from beginning to end.
The film's most harrowing moments are its first 40
minutes, when Jin-tae and Jin-seok arrives 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 massive military engagement on a hillside along the 38th
parallel that ends with the two factions caught up in a bloody, brutal,
alleyway-style gang fight. It's all incredibly executed, not to mention
utterly and completely insane.
But like all war movies, "Taegukgi" has too
many characters and not enough time to get to know them. Thus, their
deaths mean little to us, and the only reason we take their deaths as
something significant is because the musical score has suddenly grown
dramatically. And guess what? That guy that keeps showing his fellow
soldiers a picture of his family? Yep. It's the biggest War Movie cliché
in the book. 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 competent, 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 naïve
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. At fault is the script, which offers too broadly drawn
characters that "grows" in Polaroid moments rather than arcs.
"Taegukgi" does deserve some of the hype
it's garnered, but it's by no means a masterpiece. It's a good film, even
by the high standards of epic war films as set by "Saving Private
Ryan". Technically speaking, it's rock solid from beginning to end,
even though one does wish it could have curtailed the script to be less
cumbersome. As a result, "Taegukgi" doesn't sprint to the end as
it should; instead, it lumbers, grunts, and finally limps home. Much like
it's main character, actually.
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