The Front Line (2011)

THE best KR war movie I have seen. Unlike other KR war movies, like the "71 into the fire", just simple war actions, good guys kill bad guys, silly. This movie really has a very profound theme, yet its war action scenes are stunning, but it didn't show off those stunning big battle scenes, it used that to well tell the story and the main message of KR war... a political proxy war... no good or bad sides, solders at front only fight for survival. A war fighting against foreign intruders, is a war worthy fighting for. But Civil war, just a pure tragedy of the nation.

Beautiful, without an equal.The acting, superb. The story, breathtaking. The action, astonishing. The screen writing, unparalleled.This movie left a deep impression on me. I recommend watching it if you haven't, you'll find yourself going through a roller coaster of emotions, clinching to your chair/couch without being able to leave.The story is not for the weak-hearted as you see war in it's most true form, the emotions from both sides as the fighting comes to a close. The relationship between enemies, comrades, friends. In the end, making men cry, young & old.(Blue-ray is recommended if you want to truly see the most subtle touches, I could not view it any other way)

Let me start off by saying that I'm a huge fan of any war movies/documentaries/TV-series/etc. It's hard to do wrong when I'm so interested in the subject manner. Technical aspects aside, my main gripe with The Front Line is that it is so full of clichés, overused tropes, imitations of other war films, and exaggerations. The fat guy as comedic relief? Check. Melodramatic reactions from just about everyone? Check. Blue filter to mean sad and orange filter to mean warmth? Check, please. Every other scene! Scenes that looked strangely and suspiciously familiar to Saving Private Ryan/Band of Brothers/Gone with the Wind/stereotypical war movies? CHECK. The film was so over the top and aimlessly drawn out. More than 50 minutes could have been safely cut without sacrificing the plot line. At some point while writing the script, perhaps the writers felt the film could use a more personal/almost romantic story. Enter "Two Seconds", a sniper from the North Korean side. The two male characters and her do not share a particularly strong and personal relationship; yet, we're forced to place an uncalled for amount of value on their connections, especially between her and Su-Hyeok (this is how his name was subtitled in my DVD; different from the IMDb listing). The writing and plot lines (that somehow felt as if there were too many and too few of the plot lines) were masterful examples of trite war film dialogs. Nary a quick chuckle escaped my mouth; probably because the joke was stale and again, derivative. I am fluent enough in Korean to understand the dialog, so I don't think it was lost in translation either. The acting, man. It was as if they read a manual on acting from the dollar store in the 1970s and followed it, word for word. It didn't feel organic, believable, or smart for me. Why do all the soldiers have such pearly white teeth? North Korean army men had the same haircuts, for the most part, but the South Korean army was mixing it up. My favorite questionable moment was when a group of the South Korean soldiers were on the hunt for Two Seconds and finally were within range of her. Hiding behind a boulder of sorts, the leader places his head on a rifle and raises it slowly above to see whether she will shoot/can see him or not. She shoots and the helmet is knocked off. A few seconds later, the audience should some how forget about this because the leader just raises his whole damn head from behind so he can get a better view. Say, didn't we just learn that she's going to shoot? If I were him, I would maybe move to the other side of the boulder or have some sort of tactic before raising my head. This concern was not addressed in the movie whatsoever because the storyline progressed with this factor being inconsequential. & Eun-Pyo - why wouldn't you at least capture this incredibly dangerous sniper who has been attacking your men? Ultimately, I say I don't know what I watched because this movie seemed to be an unsatisfying stew of other works, unoriginal characters and dialog, and bad acting. I would give them one star, but I have to give them credit for the few scenes that were shot nicely. I don't know how well this film was received in Korea, but I can't believe this was the best the country could offer for Academy Award contention.

Plot: North and South Korean troops fight over a meaningless hill just as the Korean War is about to end.The main problem with this film is that it doesn't know what story to tell. It starts out with a South Korean counter-intelligence officer being sent to an infantry unit that has been posting letters from North Korean soldiers to their relatives in the South. But then that gets cleared up and we're left with two stories: the fight over the hill (in which the same three scenes - attack, chat, look in secret box - are repeated over and over again) and a overly-large sub-plot about a sniper. The military scenes are all done in the style that Saving Private Ryan made popular, which would be fine except that they aren't well thought out enough and lack objectives, tactics and incident. Mostly the troops run up or down a hill, shooting as they go. To get some idea of the unreality of it all: at one point the SK troops lose the hill and retreat in disorder...but when we meet them next (only minutes later)they are all sitting around without their weapons chatting in camp. Isn't there a massive hole in their lines they ought to be guarding?The film constantly lapses into tear-jerking melodrama, with nearly every death (of a character) dragged out and plenty of rote speeches: War is Bad, A Divided Korea is Bad, Aren't We All the Same Anyway etc. Plus, lots of dreadful tinkly piano music. The unit is completely dysfunctional, full of drug addicts, the mentally ill and the emotionally unstable. Everyone is forever crying or threatening to shoot each other (in one flashback they really do). The characters are all clichés (rookie, prankster, old sweat etc.) and the emotional relationships are underdeveloped. There is also a hefty dose of coincidence: who would have thought that the protagonist would meet his old buddy and the NK soldier who captured them three years ago on the same battlefield? Really, this is just a worse version of Brotherhood (Taegukgi), a film which did all the same things in this film only much, much better. Watch that instead.