Summary
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. 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.

Review
Can you say Saving Private Ryan ripoff? Kang Je-gyu's Korean War epic takes more than a few cues from the greatest war films ever made and homogenizes them into an uneven spectacle. What's most apparent is the fact that this film was made in the wake of Spielberg's classic as the story structure is almost a carbon copy of SPR. Je-gyu made a name for himself for 1999's Shiri which was his attempt at a bloated Hollywood action film. Here he has moved on to more emulating more refined Hollywood epics and ends up struggling to keep pace with the masters. I would liken Taegukgi to Michael Bay's Pearl Harbor more so than SPR or Platoon in it's direction. It becomes obvious that an action filmmaker is at the helm as the more frenetic tendencies of the action mindset come to the fore.

The director lacks the confidence in the material to elicit emotion so he tries to force it with visual tricks that come off more hokey than affecting. I don't believe I saw a single frame of originality in the entire film and at 140mins that's damn impressive (and not in a good way). Don't get me wrong, Taegukgi is far superior to Bay's opus de garbage but it's still not as great as it aspires to be. At the time, it is the most expensive Korean film ever made and it shows. The production design, effects, and sound are all top notch and Hollywood quality. One can see why it is South Korea official entry for consideration in the 2004 Oscars, but the better choice would have been either of Kim Ki-duk's 2004 films Samaria or 3-Iron. Taegukgi is good, but far from great.

i thought this movie was good

I thought it was really good too, and besides, Won Bin's in it=] The acting was well done, and the realism of the show really portrayed the history well

will watch this movie again

great movie, one of the few big korean war movie

omg!!! a really good war movie ^^ even my parents are interested in this since they like war stories, and i liked it because of Won bin

I like military movies, so this is right in line with what I like. definitely good writing as well.

ive always loved this movie it made me cry and i wont get tired of watching this but no this is no comparison for Saving Private Ryan, this was much good than that movie

this is a sad sad movie, i cried a lot...still, won bin was hot

GREAT GREAT MOVIE!
really one of the best movies I have ever seen!