Mark Reviews Movies: BATTLE OF JANGSARI

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Review by Mark Dujsik | October 10, 2019

While United Nations forces were winning a decisive battle near the beginning of the Korean War, another group of soldiers, most of them students who had not completed military training, were trying to survive multiple assaults against and by North Korean forces. This battle, apparently, had been forgotten, because it was only a diversion and because the mostly untrained soldiers essentially were left to die. Battle of Jangsari tries to expose these soldiers' mistreatment and to honor their sacrifice, but its attempt is thematically and emotionally hollow.

In September of 1950, Captain Lee (Kim Myung-Min) has volunteered to lead a unit of soldiers on an amphibious assault of Jangsari beach. One of multiple attacks meant to divert North Korea's attention from a planned assault at Inchon, the young, inexperienced soldiers under Lee's command have no idea of the chaos and carnage they are about to face.

Director Kyung-taek Kwak's movie is essentially divided into three parts. The first—and easily the most effective—details the various combat situations that the soldiers encounter.

There's the initial assault, without any UN support, as the soldiers must survive machine gun fire, while making it through the water and across the landmine-strewn beach. Later, with North Korean reinforcements approaching, the unit decides to ambush their opponents at a tunnel. The final fight is a desperate retreat to the single ship that the UN has provided—and which doesn't have enough room or time to save everyone. Kwak mounts these sequences with a clear-eyed view of the tactics and horror on display.

The rest of the movie isn't nearly as a skillful. The moments between the battles make up the other two sections. One features the student soldiers, none of whom are given much by way of characterization (Minho Choi plays Sung-pil, a young man whose family escaped from North Korea, and he's of primary focus here), as their initial excitement turns to fear, to relief, to resilience, and to doom. In the other, American journalist Marguerite (Megan Fox) scolds an American colonel (played by George Eads) for the UN Command's obvious abandonment of the men on the beach.

Much of this non-combat story relies on melodrama, which means we never gain a sense of these characters as actual people. Battle of Jangsari, then, mostly falls back on outrage and nationalism to make its somewhat contradictory case.

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