71: Into the Fire

This is a well-made film with an excellent cast, but for some reason it didn't grab me by the heart like so many other Korean war films. Plus there were a few scenes I didn't quite believe and a couple of weak spots in the first half. Apart from the acting performances, I have to commend the music, it was beyond excellent. It has become almost a habit for me to be in pieces at the end of every war movie, but that wasn't the case here. And that's why I’m rating the film as only slightly above average. 3.5 stars. (22/11/2014)

Korea's Magnificent 71, led not by Yul Brynner but by the Eurasian champion of gaping at the horrors of war. Not that I blame him. After all, filming with extreme resolution digital cameras requires that the film crew put their weight into the sawing. On one hand, the technology allows us to capture in sharp focus the finest flying specks of dust, not to mention explosions that throw thousands of tiny parts into the air that are no longer a blur, where each is in full focus and we can follow its trajectory comfortably as far as the length of the shot allows, but on the other hand we have to reckon with the necessity of absolute ultimata in terms of make-up, effects, costuming, and production design. If there's one place the film doesn't really fail, it's here. The ubiquitous dust, dirt, bloody pustules, worn guns, flying shrapnel, burning soldiers, and glorious explosions in the long shots leave the viewer guessing at nothing, and though it goes over the top a few times (an over-stylized shootout in the tall grass, almost funny gore), the eyes have their fun. And it actually quite masks the fact that the script was apparently written by a twelve-year-old nationalist after a three-day crash course in screenwriting, which means that while the film waves the epic history banner, it ends up pitting a literally bullet-riddled protagonist on a pile of corpses, machine gun in hand, against an arrogant bad guy in a white uniform firing a Russian PPSh-41 submachine gun single-handed. (02/10/2014)