- Audio Commentary by Director Kang Je-Gyu and Actor Jang Dong-Gun &
Won Bin

JinTae (Jang Dong-Gun) shines shoes hoping to save money to send his
younger brother, JinSuk (Won Bin) to university. Their mother runs a noodle
shop wishing the best for her two sons even though things have been tough
since her husband has passed away. Sending JinSuk to university has
become the shining light in their everyday.

With the start of the Korean War (25th June 1950), JinSuk is unwillingly
conscripted into the war, JinTae joins the war to save his brother and send
him back to his mother. Without money or influence, the only hope to save
his brother is for JinTae to enlist in suicidal missions in order to earn the
Medal of Honour. The medal will guarantee JinSuk's release.

JinSuk fails to understand his brother's actions and misinterprets them as a
dangerous mix of patriotism and obsession with fame and glory. It is only at
he fatal end that JinSuk realises the truth of his brother's sacrifice.

[Review]
The long-awaited domestic film "Taegukgi" has finally arrived in theaters,
and in many ways it doesn't disappoint. Costing nearly 15 billion won to
make, the film, about two brothers caught up in the Korean War, is visually
as spectacular an achievement as any domestic film ever made. Gang Je-
kyu, whose last movie "Shiri" gave birth to the term "Korean blockbuster," has
achieved the look and feel of "Saving Private Ryan" or "The Thin Red Line,"
but with about a fifth of their budgets.

Equal to the scale of "Taegukgi" (the name of the South Korean flag) is the
story's unabashed sentimentality. Jin-tae (Jang Dong-gun) is an uneducated
shoeshine man living in Seoul just prior to the Korean War. His dreams are
small and simple: To one day open up his own shoe store, marry the
woman he loves (Lee Eun-joo), and see that his younger brother Jin-sok
(Won Bin) gets into a good university.

But the simplicity of their lives lie in sharp contrast to the chaos of war,
which falls over the two brothers suddenly. Forced to fight on the South
Korean side, the brothers find themselves huddled in the frontline trenches
with the barest of arms and equipment, surrounded by others as confused
as they are.

In these early combat scenes, the film paints a vivid portrait of war's grim
brutality. By using camera techniques and varied film speeds similar
to "Saving Private Ryan," Kang captures the nightmarish panic that would
pervade an actual battlefield.

Complementing the gritty and visceral realism of these scenes is the intense
human drama that develops between the two brothers, revolving around Jin-
tae's decision to do anything in his power to keep his younger brother from
harm. Jang and Won take on roles that could have been cliched, and put on
stunning performances as siblings whose relationship turns more
ambiguous and complex as the film, and the war, wears on.

For a majority of its 140 minutes, "Taegukgi" lives up to its pre-release hype
and the grandness of its title. The soldiers' growing proficiency as killers and
their increasing willingness to go to extremes are fascinating and agonizing
to watch, both as a narrative about the human condition and as a metaphor
for the authoritarianism that later overtakes the two Koreas.

It is only in the latter stages, when Kang reaches for a grander symbolism,
that the film begins to falter. But due to the strength of the rest of the
film, "Taegukgi" survives its highly melodramatic and unconvincing ending
and remains an impressive balance of grit and sentimentality.