It’s been about eight years since the writer and director of Tae Guk Gi: The Brotherhood of War made a film, but now he’s back with a new historical war drama that’ll blow your socks off. Kang Je-Kyu’s new film, My Way (Mai Wei), is a large and expansive production that can only be described as a cross between Saving Private Ryan, War Horse and Chariots of Fire.
After emerging as bitter rivals and enemies as young marathon runners, Korean native Kim Jun-shik (Dong-gun Jang) and Japanese aristocrat Tatsuo Hasegawa (Jô Odagiri) both find themselves in the Japanese army, fighting the Chinese and Soviets in a bloody battle. Jun-shik is there under duress, while Tatsuo is a powerful colonel. After both are taken prisoner by the Soviets, their mutual hatred and mistrust boils over into a violence that is only stopped by the continuing horror of the war. Forced to fight for the Soviets, the two eventually rely on each other for survival, making it to Germany, where they are in turn separated and forced to fight for the Nazis. They meet again at Normandy Beach, both unlikely survivors, bonded together by history as they struggle to survive one more terrible battle as the Allies arrive on D-Day.
Pretty cool plot, right? And the craziest part is that it’s inspired by a true story which means that bitter enemies survived together for years only to get separated and reunited at another point in another country. They did all this without managing to kill each other too!
My Way is very much like a Spielberg war film in that it has some extremely epic and long battle scenes that are nothing short of stunning, like Saving Private Ryan, with the prospect of hope thrown into the mix. Like War Horse, My Way is also uplifting as you watch Kim Jun-shik survive battle after battle, stay true to his principles and attempt to reunite with long lost friends. But even with these moments, the movie is not without its trials and tribulations as friends also die, he is captured and forced to fight for a new army and is relocated even further from home all alongside his bitter enemy Tatsuo.
Besides the amazing battle sequences, Kang Je-Kyu is able to show how stupid war philosophies can be when seen from different perspectives. We witness Tatsuo’s ideology change throughout the film as he digresses from a war mongering Colonel in the imperial army to a forced fighter on the Soviet frontline. Kim Jun-shik was forced to fight for the Japanese army even though he considers them an enemy. While fighting for the Japanese and realizing suicide is imminent, he and his fellow soldiers begin to retreat during a Soviet attack. Rather than letting them retreat, Tatsuo starts killing his own soldiers telling them to die honorable. While fighting the Germans and realizing they are getting destroyed, the Soviet soldiers start to retreat but their commander yells not to and beings shooting down his own soldiers as well. This is the moment when it all clicks for Tatsuo and can now honestly know what it must have been like to be in Kim Jun-shik’s shoes while he was his commander. To me, this was the most important and impactful portion of the movie because from then on, Tatsuo had a lot more respect for his Korean running rival and how cruel it is to gun down your own soldiers when defeat is imminent.
My chief complaint with My Way is that language barriers seemed to be completely ignored when either Tatsuo or Jun-shik’s friend, Anton, were speaking or listening to their captors. For example, when they are in the soviet POW camp, Tatsuo is asked by the Soviet officer to step on his flag but nobody translates this for him, yet he replies in Japanese and somehow everyone else understands him. Situations like this happen a few times and it makes absolutely no sense.
One other complaint was how overly self righteous and blatantly stupid Jun-shik was throughout the film. There were probably four instances in which he should have been dead but somehow managed to evade death. If he wasn’t a main character he would have easily been killed, but somehow he just kept trucking along, saying stupid things to high ranking officials, getting smacked around with the butt of a rifle and still found the power to get up and survive.
Overall, My Way is a solid Korean WWII flick that is very reminiscent of a Steven Spielberg war drama. It’s an expansive and impressive feature chock full of very large scale battles, high production value, terrific acting and solid drama. Even with my two complaints, the movie is well worth your time but make sure that if you sit down to watch it that you’re in it for the long haul as it’s 143 minutes long.
Rating: An epic Spielberg-esque WWII drama that every War film fanatic should see (7/10)
My Way opens on April 20th in New York and LA and will expand to other theaters on May 4th.
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