71 - Into the Fire   Starring: Kwon Sang-woo, Cha Seung-won, T.O.P and Kim Seung-woo Cine Asia RRP: £17.99 SBX489 Certificate: 15 Available 14 March 2011

In the 1950’s civil war broke out between North and South Korea, the north initially pushed the South Koreans and their American allies. The tide of the war was turned not only by great battles but also by seventy-one school boy soldiers, who held up the North Korean army for nearly eleven hours...

71 - Into The Fire (2010 - 2 hr, 17 min) is a war film, based on true events, directed by John H. Lee, from a script by Lee Man-Hee and Kim Dong-Woo. The film stars Kwon Sang-woo (Ku Kap-jo), Cha Seung-won (Park Mu-Rang), T.O.P (Oh Jung-Bum) and Kim Seung-woo (Kang Suk-Dae).

There can be little doubt that Saving Private Ryan set the bar high for realistic depictions of war, whilst many films have failed to take up the gauntlet 71 isn’t one of them. The movie opens in a similar manner, with the audience being thrown straight into a loud grungy battle, where there is more mayhem than organisation. 71 does not surpass Ryan, but it is right up there, although you do get the feeling that the influence of Ryan oft time crossed the border into nicking a few good ideas.

Our hero is fallible; in fact when we first encounter Oh Jung, he is spending more time hiding than he is fighting. When the school students find themselves the only defenders of the Pohang Girls Middle School against a trained and heavily armed North Korean army, the fires of war change them.

Politically the movie is confused, for the most part the boys spout propaganda about the filthy Northerners, but when they surprisingly start to kill them, with more than a little success, their cries and screams move some of them to find common ground, they are after all young men asked to kill each other for someone else’s ideology. But you get the feeling that this is only really skin deep, unsurprising given the tensions between the North and South since the end of open hostilities, I’m not sure that a film which identified with the North would find a receptive audience in South Korea.

In many ways 71 follows the modern conventions of war movies, showing not only conflict between the opposing forces, but also dissent with the ranks, this is understandable, given that most of the school boy warriors had barely fired a gun before they were asked to face off against a fully armed army.

Sad to say the copy of the film I received was only a screener, burned to a DVD, so neither the quality of the picture or sound could be successfully commented on, indeed it was difficult to find a machine which would play it. With a good print the film would be a primary buy for fans of modern war movies. The finished disc seems to have a fairly comprehensive set of extras, but as I didn’t get these I cannot reflect on either their length or quality.

Even, given the rough nature of the print, the story is a tragic one, with amazing visuals, so it still earned a high mark.

7

Charles Packer