Taegukgi: The Brotherhood of War

Korean Title: Taegukgi Hwinahlimyuh

Cast:
(written as Character ... Actor)
Lee Jin-tae ... Jang Dong-gun
Lee Jin-seok ... Won Bin
Lee Jin-seok (elderly version) ... Jang Min-ho
Kim Young-shin ... Lee Eun-ju
Kim Mahk-jum (the mother) ... Lee Young-dahn

Writer/Director: Kang Je-gyu

Plot Overview:
The story of "Taegukgi" might as well have been called the story of two brothers. That is basically what the movie is about. We are taken into a world and are shown, vividly, the relationship between two brothers and how it is shaped by the Korean War.

The elder brother, Lee Jin-tae, shines shoes for a living. He is the "man of the house", since their father has long since passed away, and holds a deep brotherly love for his younger brother. The younger brother, Lee Jin-seok, carries all of the family's hopes and dreams. He is an excellent student who earns top marks at his high school. Jin-tae has dropped out of school, but he shines shoes (and aspires to open a shoe store) with the dream of sending his younger brother to "Seoul Dae-hakgyo" (Seoul National University, the top college in Korea). Jin-tae is even soon to be a newlywed, engaged to the beautiful Kim Young-shin, who lives in their home along with her three young siblings. Alongside Jin-tae's mother, Young-shin helps run a noodle stand whose business has recently been looking up. All in all, they lead a very simple, happy life.

Just as things seem just about perfect, boom! There comes the fateful day of June 25, the start of the Korean War. The family must flee their home in Seoul, which is being heavily bombed by the North Koreans. They find themselves at a train station crowded with massive amounts of people, hoping to get to their uncle's house in safety. Unfortunately, one of Young-shin's siblings falls ill and is in need of treatment. Being the gentleman that he is, Jin-tae goes in search of the medicine.

While Jin-tae is gone, Korean military recruitment officers come by and take away the barely-eighteen year old Jin-seok without telling him where they are taking him. Jin-tae returns with medicine, only to find that his mother is too grief-stricken to speak. Young-shin points Jin-tae towards where Jin-seok was taken and Jin-tae goes there, soon to find his brother is on a train: a train to join the military! Jin-tae tries to rescue his brother from the train but is unable to do so with all the guards onboard. Thus both brothers end up on a train to what might possibly be the deaths of both of them.

While in the military, Jin-tae immediately decides to protect his brother and requests that he and his brother be allowed to stay together. Jin-tae then makes sure that he himself gets all the dangerous assignments while his younger brother sits back in safety. Jin-tae becomes a hero by taking risks and displaying unbelievable bravery, but his experiences change him to a point where Jin-seok cannot understand his actions or even recognize him anymore. Jin-tae's true motives are soon discovered: he wants to earn a medal and exchange it for his brother's freedom. The medal is only the beginning; circumstances complicate and the brothers find themselves separated and on opposite sides of the battlefield.

My Thoughts:
Can you say "perfect movie"? This is absolutely the all-time best movie I have ever seen, ever, out of anything I have ever seen in my entire lifetime. The message of this movie is so strong: the ties of brotherhood and the pain that war causes, along with the fact that war should not be the answer. I could feel the last message very strongly in the battle scenes. In many battle scenes, you feel yourself on the South Koreans' side, seething at the evil North Koreans "commies". However, as you watch the last battle sequence, you understand that the South Koreans and the North Koreans are exactly the same. The South Koreans are just as ruthless and horrible as you may have thought the North Koreans were. You see the damage that war causes and the pain it causes the people affected.

The story is absolutely stunning. The love between Jin-tae and Jin-seok is so touching. Just as I was beginning to think that Jin-tae was a complete and savage monster, there comes a scene where Jin-tae wipes the sweat off a sleeping Jin-seok's face. You could feel the love Jin-tae still has for his younger brother so powerfully in that single scene. It was truly beautiful.

I would like to give major cookies to the man who played the elderly Jin-seok, Jang Min-ho. Within the first fifteen minutes, he had me reduced to tears. I have watched every single five-star, tear-jerking Korean drama ever made and have never shed a single tear over them. Yet this movie had me to this point after less than fifteen minutes! You can imagine me after the entire movie had gone by. The old man's emotions just flew out of the screen as he cradled the shoes in such a way that even though you don't yet know the significance of the shoes, you can feel it. He also gives a very deeply moving performance at the ending, when he visits the archaeological site. All his sorrow and pain simply comes alive at you.

The violence and gore is a major turn-off to many people. I'm not going to sit here and tell you that there wasn't a lot of it, because there was. Oh yeah. Heads being shot off, crude surgery (yes, they show you detailed, albeit blood-covered, shots of this), limbs blown off by explosions, bullets galore ? there is even a famed "maggot scene" in which you see that maggots are growing on an infected wound. My friend, after hearing about the maggots, proclaimed that "Taegukgi" was nothing more than a gory war movie with a stupid, overly-straightforward, pointless plot. I can't express how angry I became after hearing these words. This is so much more than a "gory war movie" and that anyone would call it stupid is much more than mere insult. The violence serves its own purpose, to show the effects of war. Whether these effects be on the men fighting for their country's cause, the people whose lives were ripped apart, or the innocence of a little girl who has lost her mother, it affects everyone. Though this was all depicted in a movie, you can feel such stark reality behind the battles. This happened to actual people with actual lives. These people left behind wives ... children ... brothers ... And this was the purpose of the gore. Additionally, "Taegukgi" is not even close to being straightforward; through this film, you begin to see deeper meanings, deeper connections, deeper kinds of love.

Actually, I did not want to watch this movie. The handsome actor Won Bin, I believed, was much too overrated. Now I understand why. His performance as a man who wishes he could hate what his older brother has become but cannot bring himself to do so is one of the saddest parts of the movie. He pretends not to care about a letter Jin-tae has left behind, yet does not (or cannot) throw it away. Instead he reads it. You cannot help but cry at the poignancy of this moment, and of their relationship in general. He is a wonderful actor and although most girls say he is "hot" in this role, I choose instead to unleash my inner fan-girly at Jang Dong-gun. Just kidding, of course.

I highly recommend this movie to anyone, especially people who know they can brave the gore. Every single one of those five stars was deserved. I saw a person leave it 3 ½ stars out of 5 and I thought to myself how stingy they were. Kang Je-gyu has my undying respect for making such a beautiful film.

Questions I Had:
1) In Korea, entrance into high schools was application-based. Since Jin-seok was so smart, he should have been going to a good high school, right? I know that the students attending the top high schools in Korea were exempt from military recruitment. So why couldn't Jin-seok have avoided being recruited in the first place?

2) The little girl in the massacred village who lost her mother ... how did she not get shot by the North Koreans? Not even once?

3) What happened to the little girl afterwards? Did she find her mother, go to an orphanage, etc.?

4) Jin-tae was this great war hero. He was so great that the army officials claimed that his joining the North Korean army was a blow to their morale. Couldn't he have used this war hero-ey fame on the officers who claimed he was a Communist for trying to save Young-shin?

5) Why do Jin-tae and Jin-seok seem to never get injured at all while bombs are exploding all around them and everyone else seems to either be dying or losing arms?

6) Why do they never provide an explanation for why the bones were identified as Jin-seok's?

7) Why did Jin-tae believe that Young-shin, a lowly commoner, could have possibly slept with all the officers of the Communist Party?

8) How did Jin-seok survive long enough for the flag unit to arrive when he was always such a wimpy fighter?

**Note: Lee Eun-joo, who played Young-shin in this film, committed suicide. She was 25 years old.