Friend

친구 (Friend) is a South Korean movie that was released in 2001. Most commonly people refer to this movie as a gangster movie but it's also said that it's one of the most important movies about friendship in general.

Story: The movie follows four childhood friends through their lives. Joon-seok is the leader of the group and his father is a gang boss. Dong-su is an ambitious man who wants to be more than an undertaker like his father. Jung-ho was known as the clown in their class and lastly Sang-taek who is an ambitious student. They've been playing together as children already, get reunited in high school and meet each other over and over again after graduating. While Jung-ho and Sang-taek went to college, the other two get into careers in rival gangs which leads to them fighting against each other. Jung-ho and Sang-taek find themselves helplessly watching their childhood friends pointing weapons at each other.
What I personally found impressive about this movie actually is the ending in court. Now I don't want to spoiler too much to those who haven't seen the movie yet but it's interesting to see how the friends still try to protect each other (as much as they can of course).

Cast: Jang Dong-gun is in this movie as Dong-su! While he became popular mainly through his roles in this movie as well as in Taegukgi: Brotherhood of War he has been playing in another gangster movie back at that time as well. I did enjoy his acting a lot in this movie anyways and will probably watch some other movies soon.
We see Yoo Oh-seong as Joon-seok, a character to whom friendship is more important than anything and who lives up to some kind of code within the gang business. Actually I found his acting to be best in this movie, fitting the story and the emotions I would imagine a character like his to feel.
Then there are Seo Tae-hwa as Sang-taek and Jung Woon-taek as Jung-ho. I don't remember much about them but together with the others they made up the main cast of this movie and I think no one stood out in a bad way.


I've rated this movie as a 7.5/10 though just because I found it interesting but not completely unique and I couldn't take some parts seriously. It's worth a watch if you're interested in the history of Korean cinema and movie analyzes but also if you just want to watch something about friendship. Be warned though, it's not a peaceful perfect world shown in this movie.