Review of The Front Line (2011) by Tristan M — 24 Jan 2015

Yet another great Korean movie about their devestating war. The begining does get off slow, and I didn't like where it was going. It kinda took on a different plot, a army intelligence officer sent to the front line to find enemy spy within their troops.

The officer found and old friend and the real point of the story opened up. The two posing armies had been battling over Areok Hill for a long time, and the hill was always changing hands. Two small groups of soldiers, one South Korean and one North Korean left gifts for each other whenever they lose control of the hill.

So the movie goes on, battling over the hill over and over, and the two groups kept exchanging gifts. The movie was now very intersting, and had a cool original idea behined it (the main charactor being an intelligence officer wasn't really mentioned again and he fought on as normal soldier).

There is a lot of back story as well, with flashbacks to lost battles, and the characters were well devoloped and individual. The last battle is really well done and finishes off the movie fairly well but with a problem.

Its sad at parts and good once the boring begining section ends and the action scenes are top notch. A good movie that has some things that a lot of war movies have and other things that almost none have.

Its neck and neck with two other Korean war movies; The Brotherhood of War, and 71: Into the Fire and gets number nine on my top 15 favorite war movie list.