BoardChiri Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

DipitySkillful an ambitious but ultimately ineffective debut endeavor.

Humaira Grant It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Janae Milner Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

Dalibor Leskovar Wow. Rarely any movie leaves me breathless but this one sure did. Welcome to Dongmakgol is an anti-war epic movie. Casting is perfect ( Kang Hye-Jung in a role of crazy local girl is outstanding, so are Jung Jae-young & Shin Ha-Kyun in the roles of North & South Korean soldiers ), music by Joe Hisaishi is phenomenal and the whole atmosphere of the movie is fantastic. You almost feel proud to watch those soldiers being normal human beings and the village of Dongmakgol is my personal vision of paradise on Earth. I've become a huge fan of Korean cinema and this movie is certainly one of the great reasons for that. Strong recommendation, a must see movie.

snn snn Realistic war scenes are blended with surreal elements which gives a taste of bloody fairy tale rather than an action movie. You will have sad moments, also funny moments and lots of forced emotional scenes.What bugs me most, in multiples of scenes, you sense a presence of some kind of omnipotent entity which interferes with lives of characters and changes natural flow of events, because of that, in the end you expect some kind of peaceful resolution but alas, war is inevitable. Unlike earlier, this time they have something to live for, something to fight for, also unlike earlier they can choose their side, and they embraced their death bravely.It's message is just a clichè: Doesn't matter which side we are on, we are alike and war is bad.I didn't like the ending. It just doesn't make sense. US wasted several soldiers over one. In the air while parachuting. Also villagers could turn the lights off or go off somewhere to escape bombardment. For me, it is a far fetched drama.I think Korean movies have bad taste of choosing actors for westerner roles. Maybe good ones are expensive to get.

elsinefilo Dongmakgol is an amazingly verdant,pristine village where a US navy pilot Neil Smith(Steve Taschler) crash-lands when his plane gets caught in a surreal butterfly storm.The village which is totally incognizant of the Korean conflict warmly welcomes the foreigner. Since no villager except the village teacher can speak any English they just try to communicate with him in their own language. At one moment the teacher asks hims "How are you?" but when Smith answers him "How do you think I am? I feel like sh*t?" so the teacher gets disillusioned with the answer because the normal correct American answer should "I am fine, and you?" :) The village looks like a calm and serene place where time stands still. The villagers have no knowledge of all the fancy trappings of modern life,technology or merely guns and weapons. Their life goes on simply and placidly till two groups of Korean soldiers (North Korean and South Korean)ends way up there. The North Korean soldiers, Rhee Soo-hwa (Jeong Jae-yeong), Chang Young-hee (Lim Ha-ryong)and the two South Korean soldiers Pyo Hyun-chul (Shin Ha-kyun) and Moon Sang-sang (Seo Jae-kyung)destroy the storage of the village in their armed clash.Apparently one of them just throws the hand grenade assuming that it's been just a "dud". The two groups of soldiers are now bound to work together in the fields to fill the storage of the village and they will actually rub off on each other somehow. The movie sounds like a surreal piece of flick sometimes. For instance, at one moment they kill one of the wild boars in a transcendent work-together. At another moment the corns blown out of the stockpile of the village falls down on the village like a pop-corn. There are some interesting characters in the movie too even if they may sound and look stereotyped sometimes they are sweet and rich characters--like the village chief and the crazy girl Yeo-il (Kang Hye-jeong.) Welcome to Dongmakgol may sound like a "platitudinous" movie for some. It may even sound "cheesy" at some points but it's indeed one sweet anti-war movie!

jooyoonchung As another review put it, this movie takes no sides. Uniforms link soldiers to a nation, but each uniform is worn by an individual. In the film, we first see the main characters, as they fight each other for some abstract ideal, something they come to realize (or already realized) that they don't really believe in. During their stay at Dongmakgol, however, they come to realize what is truly worth fighting for, and ultimately trade their lives to preserve it.To me, it seems that the movie yearns for the innocence that Korea lost during the Korean War. Dongmakgol, the village - exemplified by the young, exceedingly naive, and perhaps a bit crazy, but cute, woman - is sort of Korea's Eden. The villagers know nothing of guns, grenades, or even that there's a war going on. When one villager asks one of the soldiers who has attacked Korea, the soldier has trouble getting the villager to understand that it is Korea that has attacked itself. For the villager, it just doesn't compute.There's a somewhat non-so-subtle theme of the hope of reunification (but, definitely a bias toward South Korea), which reminds me of Taegukgi.This is the director Kwang-hyun Park's first film, I believe. For being so young, he is an adept director. I anticipate his next film with hope.