The Long Way Home

Three days before the armistice is signed in the Korean War. Nam-bok, a South Korean farmer who has been conscripted, is handed a classified document that could change the course of the war. He loses it under attack. The same document ends up in the hands of Yeong-gwang, a young North Korean soldier left alone after his unit is bombed. The two of them come face to face at the front. Chun Sung-il's film tells the war by looking from both sides. Nam-bok is middle-aged and wants to go home; Yeong-gwang is barely more than a child and wants to go home too. The telling moves between comedy and tragedy. The film declares neither side evil and neither side heroic; what matters is the two men ceasing to be enemies to each other. Sul Kyung-gu plays Nam-bok and Yeo Jin-goo plays Yeong-gwang.