Tae Guk Gi has been called "The Saving Private Ryan of Korea". I suppose that description is apt. Like Ryan the battle scenes are just as intenese and bloody. There are many more battles fought during this movie than Saving Private Ryan, however. Like Ryan the movie opens with a shot of an old man and the movie then shifts back in time and ends in the present day. The parallels end there, I think. Tae Guk Gi is a unique movie and not a Ryan rip-off by any stretch of the imagination. The Korean War was a hard-fought, bloody disaster of a war and it was refreshing to see the movie focus and remain in a Korean point-of-view. The Americans are mentoined several times but not really shown, unless you could the anaonymous aircraft pilots.
The movie is about two bothers for Seoul, one an uneducated shoeshine the other a promising student ready to enter college. War breaks out and both brothers are drafted to serve. The older brother, the shoeshine, is wary of is younger brother serving in combat as he (the younger) has a weak heart. All men are drafted in depseration and only those who are blind, deaf or missing limbs are allowed to remain behind. During the first battle, set during the defence of the Pusan Perimeter, the younger brother nearly dies of a heart attack brought on by stress of battle. He is saved by his older brother and it is then the elder talks to an officer and agrees to take any and all dangerous missions in an effort to win the Korean Medal of Honor. If he wins the medal the officer agrees to let his younger unwell brother go home to continue his education and provide and assuming the head of the household (the bother's father passed away young though no mention was made how he died).
I don't want to ruin the movie for you so that's where I'll stop with the spoilers. What I will say is the last quarter of the movie took a very unexpected and bizarre turn.
This is a very well-made movie. The movie was released in 2004 and filmed in 2002, and 2003. With that in mind the graphics looked advanced for the time (but not for 2009). The production was solid, the story was well-written and the movie was beautifully shot.
**** out of *****
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