dailycal.org/article.php?id=15940
COURTESY/DESTINATION FILMS Jang Dong-Gun and Lee Eun-Joo play Jin-Seok Lee and Young-shin, key players in a wartime fraternal folly in Tae Guk Gi: The Brotherhood of War.
html The subtitles of the Korean movie Tae Guk Gi: The Brotherhood of War begin dwindling about 30 minutes into the film. The next two hours of Kang Je Gyus 150-minute flick are all but devoid of language and plot, choosing to focus instead solely on the visual depiction of the bloodbath that was the Korean War. Between maggots crawling over the chests of the wounded and soldiers dressed as bushes surreptitiously jumping out of bushes, there is little time left for the intricacies of character development. The film begins with Jin-Tae (Jang Dong-Gun) shining shoes in order to send his younger brother Jin Seok (Won Bin) to university. But with the start of the Korean War in 1950, the familys plans are cut short when both sons are drafted to fight for South Korea. The rough camerawork of the departing sceneand numerous other scenes throughout the movieis perhaps the most effective element in showing the chaos of war and the passions of destruction that so often overtake man. The camera jerks and shakes, mimicking the rage of Jin-Tae as he realizes that his brother will be going to war instead of to the university. Unable to keep his brother from being drafted, Jin-Tae resolves to send him back home by enlisting in suicidal missions in order to win the Medal of Honor, the only way of releasing a family member from military obligations. Bombs blast, blood and guts spill, techno music plays in the background, and somewhere in there Jin-Tae becomes a celebrated war hero. The only problem is that Jin Seok has no intention of going home a nobody while his brother basks in his fame and glory. The conflict is resolved, or rather escaped, when the Chinese join the war on the side of North Korea and all bets are off everyone must fight. After another hour or so of gruesome violence, the drama between the brothers unfolds as Jin-Tae defects, thinking that his younger brother was killed in an explosion. Jin Seok renounces his brother, not knowing his real intentions, but then has sentimental flashbacks of the good times he shared with his brother and a Popsicle. The sudden change of heart propels him to surrender to the commies in order that he may find his brother. Alas, this potentially touching moment is reduced to a ridiculous, overdramatic epiphany that ultimately has no actual grounding in the last two hours of the film. Unfortunately, the sappy ending is all too predictable as the Americans come to the rescue of the South Koreans and do what they do bestkill.
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