Taegukgi (Brotherhood)

This one has been on my personal "must watch" list for a while. Taegukgi, or Brotherhood as it's known in some places, is a South Korean war film about the Korean War. It follows a pair of brothers who are forced into the army and strive to survive to see their mother and family again. I'd heard this was a very high budget movie that could rival even movies like Saving Private Ryan. That's quite a tall order to fill that's for certain! Click on the jump to see how close it came.


Before we really get into the nitty gritty of anything, I just want to flesh out the story a bit more. Two brothers are the focus of Taegukgi, the eldest being Jin-tae Lee, and his younger brother Jin-seok Lee. Their father died in an accident, so Jin-tae left school early to earn what money he could as soon as he could to help put Jin-seok through school. Basically they could either both struggle with school and part time jobs to support their family, or Jin-tae could quit completely to earn all the money while Jin-seok focused on his studies to have a real life for himself later, and it was paying off as Jin-seok is doing extremely well and likely to go to college.

Unfortunately that's when the war breaks out and they basically get kidnapped into the army. Jin-tae wants to protect his younger brother at all costs, and learns from his commanding officer that if he wants to volunteer for the high risk missions, then he'll keep Jin-seok out of battle as much as possible. He also lets him know that doing these dangerous missions successfully will likely land him a medal of honor, at which point higher up officers would be likely to do whatever he wished and he could have Jin-seok sent home to their mother. Upon learning of the deal, Jin-seok is angered that his older brother is thinking only of saving him, and not of their family. He pleads for Jin-tae to stop, what would Jin-tae's young bride-to-be waiting at home do if he gets himself killed trying to protect his brother? All this is fairly early in the film and the majority is of the two going through a year of hard battles and war.

"Goddammit, you bitch! You never backed away from anything in your life! Now fight!"

The action and effects of the war are some of the highest quality I've seen in a long time for a war movie. Lots of explosions and close calls and people getting killed left and right. Effects of soldiers getting hit with bullet-fire, or worse yet, mortar-fire are really good. Even the locations and sets for the battles and the little things like the uniforms seem to be thought out really well. Every single battle is filled with tension and excellent camera shots that really bring it all together.

Of course what really brings the movie together is the relationship between the brothers and their family which is set up excellently early in the film. You don't get to see much of their family because the war starts up quite fast. Even so, with the little time afforded to show them on screen, I felt their connection was really solid and it was sad to see their old mother running beside the train as they were taken away. The bond between the brothers was really good too and I always felt that they really cared about each other. Basically the story and drama work really really well and there were a lot of emotional highs and lows.

There is LOTS of action in Taegukgi's 2 1/2 hour run-time

It's not quite as good as Saving Private Ryan if I need to be that specific, but it's soooo close it's definitely in the same class. The only thing that held it back were the just some small issues with the final battle scene effects, which is unfortunate because it was so close to being great the whole way through. I'd still definitely recommend it, especially if you like war movies! Tons of action, great characters and good story make for a great film!


*Bonus points to anyone who knows the quote I threw in under the first picture ;) No Googling!