TAE GUK GI: THE BROTHERHOOD OF WAR (2004) (***1/2)

South Korea is an emerging film powerhouse. This film proves that filmmakers working anywhere can rival Hollywood in production value and storytelling skills. For lack of a better description, this is a Korean SAVING PRIVATE RYAN with shades of PLATOON and APOCALYPSE NOW. Director Je-gyu Kang (SHIRI) has don't an amazing task of creating a film that is both epic and intimate at the same time.

Jin-tae (Dong-Kun Jang, TV’s GHOST) is a shoeshine boy who dreams of opening his own shoe shop. He works to support his mother, his fiancée Young-shin (Eun-ju Lee, GARDEN OF HEAVEN), her young siblings and his 18-year-old brother Jin-seok (Bin Won), who is college material. Their life is simple, but they are happy. Then the Korean War breaks out and everything changes.

Jin-tae and Jin-seok are drafted into the army. Jin-tae desperately wants to protect his younger brother. An officer promises him that if he wins a medal then his brother can go home, so Jin-tae signs up for every suicide mission he can. But this film is too good to just be about a man’s undying love for his brother. The glory and horrible tragedy of war is brought to life in violent and vicious ways. How the war changes the characters is a huge part of the film’s journey and the main crux of its power. Jin-tae soon becomes drunk with the power that war can bring. His personality becomes brutal and uncaring, which is a stark contrast to his motivations going in. By the end, he has lost the reasoning for why he fights and his younger brother must try to save him.

The film can be sentimental at times, but it earns it. The key metaphor of two brothers in a war where Koreans are killing Koreans is not lost but never beaten into the audience. The lead performances are stellar. Dong-Kun Jang emerges as a star, giving a searing portrayal. The film is filled with a chorus of other soldiers who add texture to the tale. The cinematography directly barrows the jittery style of PRIVATE RYAN and combines it with the claustrophobic feel of PLATOON. The film is a heartbreaking story of men made to do horrible things and how some can retain their humanity, while others lose a bit of their souls. For Americans, it's also a stark reminder of the war between World War II and Vietnam that seems to have been lost from memory. It’s a must see.