Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #18636 in DVD
• Released on: 2005-09-05
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Formats: Anamorphic, Box set, Dubbed, PAL
• Subtitled in: English
• Dubbed in: English
• Number of discs: 2
• Running time: 142 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
A big, bruising epic of the Korean War, Tae Guk Gi or Brotherhood smashed box-office records when it played in South Korea in 2004, almost as though the country needed to re-live the trauma at a 50-year distance. For the rest of the world, this movie looks like a ground-level reckoning in a melodramatic key, with an authentic feel for battle lines as well as home front. It follows two brothers--one uneducated and forceful, the other intellectual and reserved--as they are united and then divided by the conflict. The broadly emotional story has some of the power of tales of the American Civil War, when family members found themselves on opposite sides of a battle. Director Kang Je-gyu , who made the lively female-assassin hit Shiri, takes a blunt approach to the material (including a Saving Private Ryan-style framing device). And at 150 minutes, he has plenty of time for head-splitting, blood-spraying combat. This movie is meant as a punch in the stomach, and it connects. --Robert Horton, Amazon.com

Synopsis
Brothers Jin-Seok (Bin Won) and Jin-Tae (Dong-Kun Jang) come from a family whose unremitting struggle with poverty has led them to place all their hopes in Jin-seok, the younger of the two. His older brother Jin-Tae shines shoes in order to raise money to send him to university, while their mother runs a noodle shop; the patriarch has passed away, leaving the little family to fend for themselves. Their precarious aspirations are shattered by the outbreak of the Korean War, when Jin-Seok is drafted and Jin-Tae joins up as well, in order to work for his brother's release. He has neither the influence nor the financial means to send Jin-Seok back home; his only hope lies in the acceptance of dangerous missions that will earn him the Medal of Honour and his brother's release. Jin-Seok, however, does not understand his brother's intentions, and mistakes his valiant bravery for misplaced patriotism and greedy ambition, until finally and tragically he is confronted by the truth. Upon its release, this moving war drama became the highest-grossing film in Korea.

Customer Reviews

Masterful!
Ive just finished watching this and felt immediately compelled to write a review, this is probably the best war film ive ever seen! Amazing direction, brutal and bloody but also moving. This is not just a realistic potrayal of war, its also a beautiful story that is well acted and superbly made! Buy it!! You wont regret it!

A different perspective on a forgotten war
Tae Guk Gi/Brotherhood of War suffers from being the hundredth film to adopt Spielberg and Kaminski's by now rather tired and clichéd approach to filming battle scenes a la Saving Private Ryan but gains both from its fresh perspective - the Korean War from the Korean viewpoint - and from honest sentiment. The story may be War Hunt revisited as two brothers go to war only to be divided as one is morally consumed by it, but it is surprisingly and genuinely moving come the finale (which handles the modern-day framing device much better than Spielberg's epic). Curiously, the film is very critical of South Korea's conduct of the war, both at the front and at home, and all the more powerful for it.

With Korea very much a forgotten war these days, it's good that the DVD extras on the two-disc set include some historical perspective alongside a detailed account of the film's production.

few can rival this !
brotherhood is a korean film that charters the civil war that took place in the late 1940s and kicked its way into the early 50s,the events of that war are portrayed here,well,the south korean angle to be more precise.
The film deals with two brothers who are forced into joining their countys fight for liberation,there is little in terms of training,they are basically handed a gun and an uniform and told to kill,the elder of teh brothers is headstrong and forceful and wants his brother to be sent home and continue with his schooling so too get this done he volunteers for the most gung ho of operations to attain a medal of bravery that should help him get his brother sent home.
The younger brother starts to see changes in his brother as he learns to kill with little remorse and all the while the rest of their family plunder on back home with little news of their sons.
The film is emotional and plays on the family ideology,this is first and foremost in may of koreas movies,the battle scenes will shock you,brains,limbs,skulls,fly through the air like candy,its violent and unrelenting in places,but stunningly achieved.
How the film pans out wont be revealed by me but i aint too stubborn to say there was a tear in my eye at the end,haunting,violent,moving and superbly achieves what it wishes to do,it is no wonder that a quarter of south koreas population watched this upon its release,now its time for us to watch this stunning piece of cinema that gives american cinema a real slap in the face.