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.

Bungee Jumping of Their Own

Is this a Boys Love movie? Well.. partly. I'll use the tag as well. BUT it's definitely not meant to be a typical gay movie!

번지점프를 하다(Bungee Jumping of Their Own) is a South Korean movie released in 2001.

Story: Seo In-woo and In Tae-hee are two college freshmen who fall in love and start dating really fast. They're sure that it's an eternal love. But one day it seems like Tae-hee is eternally disappearing out of In-woo's life because of an accident.
Seventeen years later, In-woo still loves Tae-hee though he's married to another woman and has a daughter with her. While giving lectures he notices that one of his students reminds him of Tae-hee all the time. He comes to believe that his student, Hyun-bin, is Tae-hee's reincarnation and that their love is meant to be. The end shows both men in New Zealand.

Cast: We have Lee Byung-hun as Seo In-woo. I think he did an awesome job playing the heartbroken character and he also showed the struggle of admitting feelings that are almost forbidden. No matter what you think about Lee Byung-hun as a person, he's a really good actor. As the female lead we have Lee Eun-ju as In Tae-hee. Most of the time we see her in flashbacks but she's pretty. Her role wasn't that complicated though in my opinion. And we have Yeo Hyun-soo as Lim Hyun-bin. As a student who's still in an important phase of orientation, he seems to be confused about everything. Which is completely understandable if you ask me. It's easy enough to believe the bullied and confused student how difficult the whole situation is.

My personal rating is 7.5/10. Some parts of the movie were just a little too much of a melodrama and I found myself confused about some things. Especially the rather open ending left me wondering why in the world two people would do this.. it's not like it makes things easier.
Sure it's somewhat romantic how far the two souls go.. but it still won't change the situation that much.