Taegukgi (2004) Brotherhood

Tae Guk Gi: The Brotherhood of War is the story of two brothers - Jin-Tae (Jang Don-Gun), an uneducated shoemaker, and Jin-Seok (Won Bin) a frail student whom Jin-tae works to pay for his education - living in South Korea in June 1950, mere weeks before the Communist North Korean forces stormed across the border, throwing the nation into war.


When the family becomes refugees, they seek to flee by train and when the elder Jin-tae is gone getting medicine, Army officials come along conscripting all men 18-30 years of age. When he returns to find that Jin-seok has been loading onto the train, Jin-tae goes in search for him only to be taken away to serve as well, even though the policy was for only one son per family was be drafted.


In an attempt to get his younger brother out, Jin-tae proceeds to volunteer for every dangerous mission to both spare his brother from the risk and in the hopes that he be decorated enough to be able to request Jin-seok's discharge. Instead of being grateful, the younger brother grows to resent Jin-tae's efforts and suspect that he's only doing these things to garner glory for himself. Eventually, these conflicts and other events grow to become a devastating wedge between them.


Tae Guk Gi has received much notice for its large, graphic battles scenes in the vein of Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers and for such a relatively low-budget film (reportedly about $14 million, not even enough to get Tom Hanks into a landing craft) they have the same staccato, fast-shutter look of those films. Other than some obviously fake CGI airplanes, it manages to duplicate the mayhem of their American counterparts. (That such great production value can be achieved on a pittance should cause Michael Bay to hide in shame.)




Whilst this is not a fantastic rip, it is still the best DivX version I could find - much better than all the 700MB rips available.