Nambugun (1990) Online

I was pleasantly surprised about this wonderfully crafted movie. It guides the viewer to "the other side" of the korean war, to the communist side. Western viewers like me, with an European background west of the iron curtain, know almost nothing about. When this side was portrait in Hollywood or early korean war movies, it was dehumanized. Now this movie shows an entirely new angle, where ordinary citizens get drawn to the communist site for all kind of different reasons, and from all walks of life. From the practical decission to the ideological one, from the workrelated one to the adventures one, for love or for revenge. All this is seen from the biographical view of a journalist who lived, and suffered through this experience. By watching this movie you feel the approach of emotional pain, by knowing that some of the wonderful human bonds created, will end with tragedy. The war movie action fan will also find this movie packed with realistic and well researched combat scenes. I was truly impressed about every aspect in this movie. Now this is the story: The American forces under McArthur land in Inchon, the communist front in southern Korea crumbles. Civil proffessionals are being ordered by the communist leaders, to join the partisans in the mountains. Whole bands of partisans have very little experience, when they meet the regular korean army in pitched battles. Mostly being defeated, they suffer under unbearable conditions. When the Chinese army enters the war, new hope and optimism arrives, giving new live to the battered spirits. Ordinary communist leaders committing reasonable decissions among some atrocities. It paints a very threedimensional picture about their movement, without a final judgement. That is very impressive. For a moviemaker, this takes guts to do. No sour note on morals in this movie. This is also a movie that portraits female soldiers in battle, in ways rarely seen in other war movies. This is the best korean war movie I have ever seen, it even outclasses my favorite up to date Tae Guk Gi.

Film of war, or at least mainly of war, as it cleverly mixes with the right doses, other ingredients and denotes in a concrete and intelligent handfuls of intellectualism, individualism, political and social ideology (which I still have to admit very truthful) but ... without exceeding or falling into simplistic rhetoric. Some sequences are quite violent and crude, such as suicide with the gun of a partisan, or the killing of a boy partisan (seriously wounded) by a companion The film is very long, lasting more than hard hours, a film that can be a real building block for those who might want a quick predominantly of war / action movie, so I feel compelled to recommend it only to those who not only have patience, but also curiosity and desire to discover and to acculturate as the film in question, is based on a memoir of Tae Lee, and then for obvious reasons, is based on true events and of which this film adaptation is considered FULLY failed. The location, for example, rarely (and I kid you not) in a Korean movie I've seen so used properly ... give the viewer the feeling of being there to fight and survive together with partisans What else to say?

I consider myself a vital film that has clear links and similarities Piagol and that "highlights" once again the supporters of North Korea as people and not as the personification of evil, and we see a good evolution, beginning with the 'initial enthusiasm for the struggle that aims liberation, and then transformed gradually into a struggle for survival, which is one of the most impressive parts of the film. A Sunk-Kee Ahn almost perfect and partly.

Reporter for a North Korean news service joins the partisans when the Americans and UN forces invade South Korea. The course of the film chronicles his journey through the war.

I picked this DVD up pretty much blind in New York's Chinatown. The only thing I could read on the package was that it came subtitled in English. The picture on the box was of our hero trying to kill himself with a rifle. Other than that I knew nothing about the film when I started it.

Neither a good film nor a bad film this was more or less a standard, though over long, war film from a different point of view, namely the North Korean. Not a propaganda piece, the film simply shows war from what many would consider the other side of the line. Large scale to be sure the film is much too polished and perfect in a completely artificial way, no ones clothes are really ragged, there is no dirt and some of the battle scenes have lines that are so neat and pretty even the most polished Hollywood film would blush. To me much of it comes off as silly TV movie.

Allowing the film most of its flaws, the one that makes me not want to recommend the film is that its much too long. The film seems to keep going and going much like the Energized Bunny in TV commercials. I didn't really see the point after awhile, to be sure it covers most of the events of the war and gets the point of its despair across, but at the same time I don't think it needed to be over two and a half hours long.

War film fans or those interested in Korean cinema may want to give it a try, others may want to give it a pass.

4 out of 10 (should be a 5 but its too long)