Director: Kwak Kyung-taek and Kim Tae-hun
Year: 2020
Country: South Korea
Alternate Titles: Jangsa-ri 9.15
Genre: Action (War)
Plot:
At a critical time in the Korean War, a small, inexperienced battalion of student soldiers are tasked with liberating the strategic location of Incheon. Despite insistence from a compassionate US reporter, the Korean soldiers are sent in to look for a special landing spot on the North Korean border. Ignoring this, they charge into their places and land on the beach taking it from the North, forcing them into a new plan of action now that the mission was a success. Realizing that they’re outnumbered, under-trained and about to be slaughtered they muster a last-ditch plan to get off the beach alive before the enemy troops can get to them.
Review:
There is quite a lot to like with this one. Among the most prominent aspects to like here is the film’s wholly immersive and somewhat stunning technical work throughout here. The action scenes are where it shines, getting up-close and personal with the soldiers as they try to accomplish their missions, which allows for the zipping gunfire and explosions to be much more impactful. That carries over into the wholly impressive amount of time spent on the choreography featured here, as the scenes of them exiting the boat to massive enemy gunfire or a swirling sequence of the camera soaring along a trench in the heat of battle featuring soldiers of both sides engaging in hand-to-hand combat. The pounding explosions, screaming and wailing and thrilling automatic gunfire here adds to the experiences as the idea of being in a massive battle is quite effective. These are just several of the big, impressive sequences throughout the film that is packed with stylish visual flair and top-notch technical qualities, making for a dynamic and impressive time during the big battles.
As well, as an action film, there’s a lot to like here. The opening moments featuring the soldiers landing on the beach from the water under extremely heavy gunfire and obstacles from enemy troops is an immersive, frenzied opening segment much like the later fights on the hillsides surrounding the beach. Taking the fight into more personal realms with far more intimate scenes featuring the troops engaging in gunfights and hand-to-hand tactics with various weaponry offers a nice contrast, with further scenes including a mission to block off a connecting tunnel and attempting to secure supplies from a local village under the guise of Northern soldiers, has some more fun action involved. The finale, a full-scale battle on the beaches while attempting to extract the remaining soldiers has plenty of strong conflicts and energy to it as both sides attempt to get the upper hand in the fray as well as try to get their friends to safety adds to the action much like the emotional flourishes at the heart of the scenes. These here provide the film with quite a lot to like about it.
There are a few minor problems overall. The main issue here is the utterly useless and completely unnecessary female reporter character who does nothing of any importance, breaks up the running time to feature nonsense sequences of her trying to get the officials to see their compassion for the people at the center of the conflict and just generally eats up time that could be better served elsewhere in the story. That it’s a role tied up with a name-value star for American audiences doesn’t mean much when they’re not important to the flow of the film. Likewise, the other real issue here is the incessant and overblown war-movie trope of trying to bring out the sentimentality of the situation, featuring soldiers who we don’t even know their names trying to make out like they’re remorseful and saddened at what’s going on here simply because it’s a staple of the genre. Seeing them laughing, joking around and completely behaving unlike any soldier ever should one minute and then trying to build sympathy for them being unable to return to their family the next is tonally off and mishandled. However, these are really all that’s wrong here.
Overview: ****/5
Armed with impressive technical merits and heartwarming drama alongside the frenzied action, this is a highly enjoyable and entertaining war effort that works nicely even with the few minor flaws present. This is definitely worthwhile for anyone interested in the genre or are fans of this type of genre effort, while those turned off by the film’s problematic areas or aren’t interested in this style should heed caution.
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