The Battle of Jangsari

My Rating: ★★★★★

The Battle of Jangsari [장사리:잊혀진 영웅들] is a South Korean historical war movie that was released on 25 September 2019.

About

The film is based on the true story of the “Independent 1st Guerrilla Battalion” of about 772 student volunteer soldiers who were sent to fool the North Koreans by staging a diversionary operation at Jangsari beach. The actual events depicted in the movie happened between 14-15 September 1950. The real invasion occurred in Incheon the day after. The student soldiers were never official accredited to the forces and only had 10 days training.

Cast

Kim Myung Min [김명민] as Lee Myung Joon
Choi Min Ho [최민호] as Choi Sung Pil
Kim Sung Cheol [김성철] as Ki Ha Ryeon
Kwak Shi Yang [곽시양] as Park Chan Nyun
Megan Fox as fictional American journalist Maggie

Review

For some reason the movie receives high ratings on Asian review sites but not on western ones.

There are quite a few Korean war time movies telling stories from this era but I would say this one of the exceptional ones. I believe there is something for everyone in the movie; lots of action, pulling of emotional heart strings, potential romance but mainly good story telling.

It seemed like there were some American starring in the movie that were based out of South Korea. Of course, Megan Fox is well known for her roles in Transformers, Mortal Combat and more. She was an important part of the film because she represented the journalists at the time to get the story out about what happened during this time.

They made all the characters likeable and tried to include as much about their story as they could within the allotted time. My favourite character was Gook Man Deuk played by Jang Ji Geon [장지건] and I love how they made him to be one of the heroes just like the other cast members; he had such an important part in the movie.

On a couple of occasions they made us feel sad for the troops on the enemy side and how they were victims of circumstance being on the battlefield.