DVD | The Brotherhood Of War

Ok, I’ll admit, I love a good modern war movie. Saving Private Ryan and Band Of Brothers are my two favourite DVDs. Hell I even enjoyed A Very Long Engagement and that was more a love story.

But the Korean War isn’t a historical event that gets a lot of movie attention, so It was good to see a Korean movie that gave an honest approach to it.

Sure the story line revolves around two brothers, and this may have caused a few of the more unbelievable points in the movie, but you’ve got to remember that Korean culture puts greater emphasis on family and respect.

The first 25 minuets is used to get us familiar with the brothers, their families and their dreams. It’s a good ploy to get us personally connected to the main characters and feel for what happens to them. It shows the human side to war very well.

As well as showing the human side of war, the movie sets out to show how dehumanising war is. It’s a brutal war movie – very similar to the opening scenes of SPR in it’s cinematic carnage.

Brotherhood however goes much further than SPR, it takes us through the entire war, showing us how dangerous war is in dehumanising us, and creating an environment for atrocities on both sides of the conflict. Brotherhood doesn’t set out to say who was right and who was wrong. Rather it seems to be more of an anti war movie.

This isn’t a movie for the faint of heart, Director Je-gyu Kang leaves nothing to the imagination when dealing with the battle field or the atrocities of war. This is one of the most visually gruesome war movies that I’ve seen, but it has to be to make it’s point. War is hell, hell is ugly, war is ugly, this movie is visually and emotionally ugly.

But it does have a redemptive ending, and ending that gives us hope. And ending that is hinted at in the beginning, but comes by way of an unexpected journey.

All in all a great movie, showcasing Korea as a credible player in the world of movie making.

I’m not sure when this DVD will get released in NZ. I think it has a September release in Australia so sometime in October would be a good guess.