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First杂志7月号
原文﹕WON BIN – TAEGUKGI
For those who can’t get enough of Won Bin, you’re in for a treat. Not only does he star in the upcoming Korean blockbuster Taegukgi, he’s actually coming to Singapore to promote the film. Remember the pandemonium when Bae-Yong-jun came to town? Expect things to get even crazier this time. It seems that girls just can’t get enough of this slight but soulful lad, who is growing into an ever-handsomer leading man. From his unforgettable perFORMances in the TV dramas Autumn in my Heart and Friends to his recent efforts in the feature films Guns and Talks as well as the upcoming Taegukgi, Won Bin always strives to prove he’s more than just a pretty face. Taegukgi shows him in his most challenging role to date. Set during the Korean War, he plays the younger brother of an over-protective Jang Dong-gun. He shows his true strength as an actor here, displaying emotions ranging from love to hate, from joy to rage. He’s unforgettable.
原文﹕JANG DONG-GUN – TAEGUKGI
If Won Bin captures the hearts of young girls, then Jang Dong-gun is equally adept at setting the hearts of full-grown women aflutter. But Jang isn’t just a ladies’man, he’s also admired by men for his brawny physique and his strong, straight-forward style. Jang started off in television more than 10 years ago, and has since grown into a full-blown international superstar, having built up an impressive career as both a singer and a film actor. His list of credits includes the acclaimed Nowhere to Hide, the popular The Anarchists, and the massively successful film Friend. This month you can catch him in Taegukgi, the biggest box office hit in the history of Korean film. He plays the elder brother of Won Bin, who takes it upon himself to become a war hero so he can get his beloved sibling discharged from army. Jang excels in this role, showing both his tender side with his brother and fiancé, and also his ferocious side, as he leads his brothers-in-arms against the North Korean troops. He’s an amazing screen presence.
原文﹕BROTHERHOOD(TAEGUKGI)
Something interesting just happened: when we searched for “Brotherhood”at imdb.com, six matches popped up, all of them for Asian movies. Three of these flicks are from Hong Kong, one is a joint TV production between China and Singapore, one is from India, and the last is the Korean movie that is the subject of this review. Who would have thought that in all the history of Hollywood no one ever thought to call a movie.
“Brotherhood”?(The Brotherhood of Satan[1971] and The Brotherhood II: Young Warlocks [2001] don’t count.) In any case, this flick is certainly aptly names as it is a truly riveting story about siblings.
Jang Dong-gun plays the elder brother, Won Bin the younger. On the eve of the Korean War, Jang is a simply cobbler who has taken care of his infirm mother and the bookish Won Bin since his father died. The two boys are so close that they are likely to prance around after each other in the street at a moment’s notice. They also like to share ice cream. Jang does have a girlfriend, but he seems so enamored o his brother that his relationship with her seems somehow beside the point. When war breaks out, the two are forced to fight, and Jang sets out to win the Medal of Honour so he’ll have the clout to get Won Bin discharged from the army.
What follow is, well, the most spectacular war movie to ever come out of Korea, a country that has vast experience and expertise in both movies and war. The director, Kang Je-gyu (he’s the guy who helped kick-start the whole Korean blockbuster phenomenon with Shiri), was able to secure the largest budget in the history of Korean film for Brotherhood, and he’s thrown every penny of it up on screen. The battle sequences are truly epic, with miles of trenches and thousands of extras and mortar cannons and tanks and airplanes stuffed into every available square-centimeter of screen area. The special effects are seamless, from the piles of burning corpses to the severed limbs to the airplanes crashing into hillsides. Put simply: Brotherhood looks awesome.
More than this, though, the drama is truly gripping. Brotherhood is not a hip, cynical anti-war movie in the vein of Apocalypse Now of Full Metal Jacket; rather, it is a big, rousing, melodramatic anti-war movie in the vein of the recent Cold Mountain (perhaps not coincidentally, both films are about civil wars). Brotherhood isn’t political, really, or sociological, but instead personal. When Jang and Won Bin find themselves on the front line, we experience their horror viscerally. When Jang volunteers for his first dangerous mission, it’s both thrilling and chilling. As his heroism becomes evermore apparent in one eye-popping action set-piece after another, we are swept up in the adventure of it all. But then the resentful Won Bin always brings us back down to earth, reminding Jang (and us) that a war hero observed from a slightly less flattering angles is merely a murderer.
This is the thing about Brotherhood, really: it has its cake(kimchi?) and eats it, too. We have fun putting ourselves in the place of the big, manly Jang as he single-handedly savages an enemy pillbox or wipes out a sniper’s nest or subdues a North Korean captain with his bare hands; but then we’re always reminded by Won Bin at the next turn that war is (surprise, surprise) Hell. The filmmakers have wisely chosen to make both Jang and Won Bin equally sympathetic, and so as their relationship grows increasingly strained and complicated, we don’t take sides, but instead pity both. We pity everyone.
Brotherhood is unique in that it is satisfying as both a spectacle and a story.
評語: This Korean blockbuster puts most of the season’s crop of Hollywood
spectacles to shame. Highly recommended, don’t forget your tissue.
總的來說這部韓片讓這季大部份的荷里活的電影感到汗顏, 我們極力推荐這部電影,
但別忘了把紙巾帶上．
source: MDG |
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匿名
发表于 2004-7-10 00:42
