World Cinema Showcase

Dominating local box office and award ceremonies alike, this pumeling big-budget Korean Platoon takes a sharply cynical grunt’s eye view of the war betwen North and South.

“A finely-crafted war film with a strong, dramatic thrust… The Front Line depicts the bitter struggle between North and South to gain foothold of a hill at the tail-end of the 1950s civil war. Jang Hun’s even-handed direction and Park Sang-yeon’s traditional but finely-tuned screenplay instil the right measure of humanist anti-war sentiment and personal heroism, turning the fates of a small company of men confined to one hellish location into an exposé of how impersonal military operations literally make mountains out of molehills.” — Maggie Lee, Hollywood Reporter

“A classically hellish picture of front-line warfare that turns several of the clichés of war movies inside-out… Jang Hun here hits the premier rank of Korean directors.” — Tony Rayns, Vancouver International Film Festival