I had heard much about this film, especially that it broke all records at the box office this year in Korea, so I had wanted to see it. Amazing how well this film works, one wouldn’t think you could pull off a fairy tale about the Korean war, but park has pulled it off, and done it in style. It has a sweet tone to it, but still ends in a bittersweet ending that no Hollywood blockbuster would have managed to pull off. This film is well worth checking out with gorgeous visuals and some very good CGI shots (over 700) that are very well integrated into the story.

The film starts with a girl, Yoe Il (Kang Hye-jeong (강혜정)) on a hill who sees an American plane crashing down. In the plane is a Lieutenant Smith (Steve Taschler) who is badly wounded and taken to the village of Dongmakgol, high in the mountains, and blissfully unaware of the war that is raging on throughout the rest of the country. 2 seperate sets of soldiers end up making it to the village too, one from the north, and one from the south. The Northern troops are all that survive from their regiment, and are Commander Lee (Jeong Jae-yeong (정재영)), Jand (Im Ha-ryong (임하룡)g) and the teenager Taeg Ki (Ryoo Deok-hwan (류덕환)n). From the south is a Lieutenant Pyo (shin Ha Kyun) who has gone awol after being ordered to blow up a bridge filled with refugees, and the medic Moon (Seo Jae-kyeong (서재경) who played the young monk in Spring, Summer, Winter… and Spring which I recently watched). When both groups end up in the village a stand off occurs, though the northerners are in fact out of ammunition, so they pull out their grenades.

REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS…

At first the bewildered villagers are made to stand in between them, but after a day of standoff the villagers go back to their own lives, while the standoff goes on. Eventually Yoe Il, who is crazy, goes up to the teenager, wipes his brow and pulls the pin from his grenade, and when he eventually falls asleep the grenade falls to the ground. Lieutenant Pyo who wants to die, jumps on it, but it doesn’t go off, so he tosses it over his shoulder, where it goes into the villages food storage shed and explodes, sending cascades of corn into the sky that pops into popcorn as it drops, and the potatoes are all roasted. Now the villagers don’t know how they will survive the winter, so the soldiers reluctantly decide to help and farm and re-fill the storage shed. The American pilot tries to call for help with his radio, and unknown to him he is heard, but on the way back a wild boar chases them, and the soldiers must work together in a wonderful CGI sequence to stop and kill it, and they eventually sneak out and eat it since the villagers are vegetarians, and of course gives them the runs after not having fat for so long. Eventually they all become friends in this peaceful village, but it isn’t too last, as a team of Rangers is sent in to rescue Smith, and then they plan on bombing the whole region into dust suspecting an enemy anti-aircraft installation. The soldiers kill the rangers save one, though the sweet and crazy Yoe Il who the teenaged soldier has taken a liking too is killed. The soldiers get plan to bomb the village out of the one surviving soldier, and using a cache of weapons from a crashed plane, set off to make it look as if their is an enemy base, but far from the village, and they send Smith with the soldier to go to the UN troops and stop any further attacks against Donkmakgol. The truly unified troops manage to get the planes to see them, and take quite a few down before the bombers come, and they watch as thousands of bombs are dropped on them blowing them all to Kingdom come, but having saved the village which they have grown to love.

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Really a wonderful if ultimately sad film. And it was nice to see the American Smith portrayed as a real human, though their is of course the evil American who wants to bomb the village, and the southern army Rangers are a nasty bunch, while the others were soldiers doing their jobs and just wanting to make it home, but realize saving this village is the most important thing, and will win their own redemption in their own eyes.