Dong-Kun Jang, Bin Won, Eun-ju Lee

A group of Korean archeologists find a skeleton and identify it as Lee Jin-Seok. But Lee Jin-Seok is still alive and he is now an old man. It is his brother Jin-Tae who went missing in the Korean War....( read more  read more... ) We travel from the present to 1950, when the Korean War started. Jin-Seok and Jin-Tae, Jin-Seok's brother, are young men who suddenly find themselves catapulted into a bloody world so different from their quiet, rural lives. As the war progresses, the war begins to poison Jin-Tae's mind. Jin-Seok is lost when he finds that he no longer knows who his brother is.

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92% liked it

471 ratings

R, 140 minutes

Directed by: Je-gyu Kang

Release Date: February 6, 2004

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Flixster Reviews (68)


  • July 30, 2009
    "I wish this was all just a dream. I want to wake up in my bed, and over breakfast, I'd tell you that I had a strange dream. Then I would go to school, and you and mom would go to work."

    A drama about the fate of brothers forced to fight in the Korean War.

    <
    ...( read more)font size=+2 face="Century Schoolbook">REVIEW
    I know very little about director Je-gyu Kang. He made three films overall and quite interestingly none after 'Taegukgi' from 2004. His creation is very different from the one coming from the other famous Korean director Ki-duk Kim, or from the Korean commercial cinema (horror or science fiction films) which is somehow known in the world.

    'Taegukgi' can be considered to a large extent a replica to 'Saving Private Ryan' by Spielberg. It's a war story involving two brothers caught in the turmoil of the Korean war, with very different personalities and destinies. One of them is the strong character and his initial purpose is saving his younger and weaker brother, sparing him the rest of the war and sending him home. In time his destiny changes and his character seems to head towards the apparently inescapable brutality and insanity of the war. The film becomes at the same time a realistic rendition of a civil war in which the borders between good and evil slowly disappear, as well as a metaphor of the tearing apart of the Korean nation, with the two brothers ending by fighting on opposite camps. The final sacrifice reestablishes the balance but the reconciliation and the peace never come, only death puts end to the life long waiting and desire for getting back together.

    Much of the screening time is filled with the war scenes, some of the best I have ever seen, and Spielberg's movie comes again in mind as the obvious reference. It is hard to say whether the story of the two brothers happens on the background of the war, or it is the war that catches the center of the attention and the story just flows with it. The effect is however strong, the story is moving and for the non-Korean viewer this is an opportunity to learn something about the history and feelings of a nation that is still divided.
  • June 25, 2008
    Great look at the Korean war from a Korean perspective.
  • October 29, 2009
    pergh..tears. blood. what else nk mintak?
  • August 26, 2009
    i wonder
    why there's no
    northern and
    southern
    Philippines hehe
  • April 25, 2009
    This is one of those movies you could watch forever. And that's basically all that needs to be said. Top notch Korean war movie.
  • April 13, 2009
    Basiaclly a War film about the Korean War.. Amazing (and no i dnt speak korean, there were subtitles)
  • April 3, 2009
    omg only got to see parts of it (skipped all the battle parts too bloody to watch in school) but it is sooo good. and soooo sad :(
  • February 15, 2009
    A very good movie about brotherhood and courage. Two thumbs up!! Love U won bin!! ^^
  • January 11, 2009
    WHY everybody is so excited of this movie? Its nothing more an American Copycat war film.

    Music so CLICHE
    SCENES predictable and the try to provoke emotions out of nowhere.

    I didnt work for me at all. Sorry.
  • January 8, 2009
    A triumphant story of two brothers' pact in gut-wrenching war. Oftentimes harrowing look of Korean war is ruined by bordering sappiness and over- sentimentality.

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