Popular reviews

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  Review by товарищ ★★★★ 4

  South Korea lived through three decades of brutal military dictatorship with mass murder and torture of leftists and suspected communists (Jeju massacre, Bodo League massacre, Gwangju massacre, etc.; you can watch Park Kwang-su’s To The Starry Island, truly terrific work). South Korean troops were also directly responsible for multiple massacres throughout Central Vietnam in Vietnam War targeting unarmed civilians, mostly elders, women and children (Bình An massacre, Bình Hòa massacre, Diên Niên - Phước Bình massacre, Hà My massacre, Tây Vinh massacre, etc.; the death tolls in most of these massacres are nearly equal to the Mỹ Lai one, in case of Tây Vinh, the death toll reaches 1.200 victims), leaving most men in the villages to join Việt Cộng…

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  Review by SupremeLemon (지존레몬) ★★★★

  Excluding the phenomenal ending, the most enduring scene in Chung Ji-young's White Badge happens to be a scene that strips away the overt violence of the Vietnam War. It's a sequence in which a journalist - Han Ki-ju (Ahn Sung-ki) - meditates on his involvement and participation in the wars that defined the tumultuous modern history of South Korea. A flashback reveals Ki-ju as one of many South Korean soldiers sent to South Vietnam, whereas another reveals Ki-ju as, presumably, one of the many more orphaned children mired in the twists and turns of the Korean War. In one segment, an aggravated Korean soldier threatens a group of Vietnamese children to clear away from the military base; the sight of…

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  Review by ablackie ★★★★ 2

  One of the most incisive post-colonial films I have seen. If Letterboxd is a reliable barometer, it’s also sadly underseen and misunderstood.

  We open in the late autumn of 1979. One chilly evening, our protagonist, Han Giju, a veteran turned reporter – a severely internalised performance from Ahn Sung-ki – prepares a simple meal of doenjang jjigae, accompanied by a bottle of soju. The scene is atmospheric, but it’s also an entry point into the moral emptiness of the era: a stupor of heavy drinking, poor self-care, and undiagnosed mental health issues. It is, in short, a miserable time to live; the only escape routes are to join the army, for men, or, for women, to move to America. Park…

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  Review by Oscar Lau ★★★½

  Based on White Badge: A Novel of Korea by Ahn Jung-hyo, WHITE BADGE deals with the aftermath of human atrocity in war more than the war itself. It provides a rarely seen perspective on the Vietnam War from the involvement of Korean soldiers in that unjustifiable proxy war, it juxtaposes the Vietnamese’s suffering with the exploitative relationship between South Korea and America. At one point the main protagonist, novelist Han Gi-ju (Ahn Sung-ki), remembers his childhood amidst the Korean War with the presence of the American army. Otherwise, the film mainly transitions in-between two time periods, the horrifying scenes in the Vietnam War in the late 1960s, and the chaotic present in late 1979 and early 80 with the demonstration…

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  Review by Chevalier ★★★½

  Underrated war drama that centers around two soldiers with PTSD who fought for South Korea in the Vietnam War. It clearly takes from other war films but it has a strong identity of it's own. Must watch.

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  Review by Shawn Kelley ★★★½

  Meditation on the effect of the Vietnam war on Korean soldiers. A perspective I haven’t seen before. Solid. Sad.

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  Review by John Nesbit ★★

  On the plus side, White Badge shows a side of the Vietnam War that few Americans even know existed——the Korean aspect. Unfortunately, the film doesn't give much insight into why the Koreans got involved. Primarily it deals with a simplistic picture of two veterans who are irrevocably affected by the war and preaches the same message we've seen in countless other takes of the Vietnam War, most recently in We Were Soldiers——it's an ancient conflict between the Vietnamese that countries like France, the United States, and Korea should have stayed away from.

  Often this film is described as the Korean version of Platoon, and two notable scenes in a village and along a farmer's path are reminiscent of Stone's work.…

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  Review by Tyler

  I was supposed to watch a HORROR movie today but instead I watched a HORRIFIC movie. That scene where they kill the civilians is one of the most painful things I’ve seen in a while.

  And yet ANOTHER movie with a military group penis inspection 😒

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  Review by objora ★★½

  Chung Ji-young (Unbowed, National Security) конечно же и раньше снимал о бездушности государственных институтов. White Badge внезапно о корейских солдатах во время Вьетнамской войны (даже не знаю есть ли другой фильм по этой теме). Корейский контингент был вторым по численности после США и если про их эффективность есть разные мнения, то по поводу особой жестокости пришлось просить прощения.

  В целом White Badge сильно вторичный фильм по отношению к американским работам про Вьетнамскую войну, которые как мне кажется довольно однообразны. Любопытным он становится разве что в каких-то редких локальных особенностях. Например, корейские солдаты верят, что женские трусики (подруг/жен/сестер) защитят от пуль покруче бронежилета. Но, наверное, последние 15 минут являются лучшими, когда два участника тех событий оказываются между протестующими и армией во время жестокого разгона демонстраций 1979-1980 гг. Параллель очевидна. Time to die.

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  Review by momoe_nakanishi ★★★½

  I don’t know why but South Korea’s involvement in the Vietnam war is something that really interests me. And there’s an extra element that they were doing now to the Vietnamese population what was done to them 15-20 years prior. This covers all of that, and well. A study of waste and regret. Reflective and critical in ways that weren’t possible before the 90’s.

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  Review by Max Roth ★★★★ 4

  Zweite Begegnung, dieses Mal in wundervoller Qualität (restaurierte Version auf Blu-ray entgegen der SD-Version auf dem YouTube-Kanal Korean Classic Film). Vieles kam nun besser zur Geltung, diverse Handlungen habe ich (nicht nur wegen der Bildqualität) nun (besser) verstanden. Ein tragisches Porträt zerstörter Menschen.

  Nach dem Wiedersehen erscheint mir die ausführliche Besprechung im Podcast Wiederaufführung unzureichend.