CommentsXp
Best movie ever!
StyleSk8r
At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.
Calum Hutton
It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...
ejwells-2
This film is simply brilliant. Makes Scorsese's Goodfellas look like Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (no offence, Marty...but this is even better than the film you decided to remake). I was spellbound from the opening scene til the end credits. I love a "span the generations" gangster film. This one is truly on par with the Godfather part 2, if not (dare I say it) better? Director/writer Kyung-taek Kwak proves himself a major force in Korean cinema, and I'm sure has even ruffled the feathers of the great Chan-wook Park with this one (well, maybe not "ruffled," as Park has since directed Mr. Vengeance, Oldboy, Lady Vengeance, and I'm a Cyborg, But That's OK, and Kwak has fallen to "Typhoon.") That all said, at least we know he has it in him, even if it was just a fluke. Certainly the best Asian film of 2001. 9 of 10 stars.
Meganeguard
Friend opens with an idyllic scene in which several children are seen chasing a truck spraying water; I think it is water at least, on a hot summer day. With peaceful music playing in the background it feels as if the film is in the same nostalgic realm as Rob Reiner's Stand By Me. This feeling is given even more of a jolt when the viewer is introduced to four young protagonists: Sang-taek, Joon-suk, Dong-su, and Joong-ho. Although from vastly different backgrounds, Sang-taek is upper-middle-class; Dong-su's father is a mortician; Joon-suk's father is a gangster, etc., the boys form a strong friendship and spend their days swimming, asking each other outlandish questions, buying "menstruation" pictures, menstruation being the word used by adults for female genitalia, and watching porn.The friends are split up when they enter junior high school, but are reunited in high school. Enduring such individuals as their English teacher who not canes students on their bare feet when they cannot answer questions correctly but who also slaps and punches them, the boys feel the pangs of first love, Joong-ho for the keyboardist of the all girl band Rainbow and Dong-su and Sang-taek for Rainbow's lead singer Jin-sook. However, it is at this point a small breach forms in the relationship between Dong-su and Joon-suk. Joon-suk arranges for Sang-taek to go to a private room with Jin-sook while Dong-su is left out in the cold. After Dong-su asks Joon-suk if he is nothing more than a henchman, Joon-suk fails to give an answer.After a major fight in a movie theater which pitted the four friends against what seemed to be an entire school, the gang of four is split and Joon-suk and Dong-su entrench themselves deeper into the criminal underworld while Sang-taek and Joong-ho pursue their own goals. Sang-taek and Joong-ho meet Joon-suk a few years later, but the once hard-as-nails gang leader has been reduced to a drug-addled wreck. However, after yet another long duration of time, the friends meet again and Joon-suk is at the top of his game. Dong-su is also at the top of his game as well as the second in a rival gang.Threaded thickly with nostalgia, Friend will move anyone who reminisces about childhood friends. Although from completely different backgrounds, the friendship between Sang-taek and Joon-suk radiates deeply. Joon-suk's protective nature is almost frightening because of his almost dual personality of ruthless brute and a caring friend. While filled with violence and blood, in my humble opinion, the comedic interactions between the four men truly make Friend a good, if not outstanding, movie.
markbeardslee
When director Kwak Kyung Taek works portions of this film as period pieces, the results are nothing short of spectacular beauty. Scenes depicting 1976 and 1981 alone are worth the price of this film.Sadly, the broader story of friendship gone awry is bogged down by clichés and melodrama and stereotypical gangster character faux angst. The plot is incidental to the message that Kwak tries to convey with this film: pure and innocent youthful friendship can be undone by the broader, but ultimately less important, adult world concerns of lust, greed and power. Indeed, the plot has been so often done that there is no need to relate it in this review. Suffice it to say that two young friends become, as adults, underworld gangster rivals in Pusan, South Korea, with plenty of that old stand-by, bloodshed, thrown in.The beauty of "Friend" starts when two friends, Joon Suk and Dong Su, along with two other friends who don't become gangsters, try to examine sex as kids. In an amusing scene, the group confuses the word "menstruation" with "vagina." This leads to some hilarity for viewers later as the sex-crazed kids go about typical early teenage shenanigans.Similarly, much later in the film, a precious scene unfolds when one of the non-gangsters visits the lair of one of his gangster friends and, while engaging in friendly banter, asks him why he, as a gangster, speaks of philosophy when he is but a "hoodlum." The gangster's henchmen get itchy (a la "The Godfather") and the gangster, instead of killing or torturing his friend, humiliates his own henchmen for overreacting by placing them in compromising positions in a car trunk. "How dare you suspect my friend and guest," he spits at his erstwhile protectors.Such portrayals of true friendship predominate until the last quarter of the film when the rivalry between the two former friends, the gangsters, erupts into stereotypical over-the-top violence reminiscent of DePalma and Pacino. And while these latter scenes are apparently meant to provide the purpose and meaning of "Friend," they come off as clichéd shoot-em-ups, filled with ho-hum dialogue and predictably "tense" scenes that come up disappointing.Still, Kwak displays instances of brilliance, such as when he portrays the rebellious underworld of South Korea in 1981 under Chun Doo Hwan's military dictatorship. Women smoking cigarettes was taboo even when I visited the country more than a decade later. Kwak is able to depict subtle scenes of rebellion in a subtle manner, and these are the gems of the film that resonate: A stunning performance by a female rock band. A running away scene with Robert Palmer's "Bad Case of Loving You" blaring in the soundtrack. A "West Side Story" type brawl in a theater while a government propaganda newsreel runs in the background. Shades of "Quadrophenia" and "Romper Stomper" prevail throughout the early half of the film, and when they do, its scenes are effectively cut with enough humorous interludes that a viewer does not want the film to progress into the "epic saga" that it eventually tries, with limited success, to become.Former friends Joon Suk and Dong Su become reluctant adversaries and Kwak attempts to use this setting as a vehicle for a commentary on friendship. It works if your idea of friendship is apologizing to your best friend as he dies at your hand, or if confessing to that murder to face a certain death penalty qualifies as redemption. After a lot of violence and prison-cell soul-searching, the film concludes with a sentimental look back at the halcyon days of the friendly boys' respective childhoods. In this reviewer's opinion, it doesn't work. What does work is Kwak's initial representation of the boys' coming of age. If he had stayed there, this film could have been a lovely revelry in the ridiculous and absurd world of happily ignorant boyhood.Instead, Kwak tries for a home run when all the friends really need is a base hit.
d_man989
the story of this movie is very unique, and it is unbelievable for those people who live in North America. All these gang fights that we will never see in our countries are happening like everyday in Asia. i really suggest you to watch this beautiful movie, if you watch this movie and u think it is a bad movie, and then u have no taste for movies
