REVIEW: Genre-bound War Picture The Front Line Still Offers a Few Startling Moments

South Korea’s 2012 contender for a foreign language Oscar feels more like a war movie than a movie about the Korean war, right up until its pitilessly bleak final frames. Though the American presence in that war is peripheral to its story, Hollywood clichés pervade The Front Line, from its slate and sepia tones to its stock company of characters and dialogue that translates macho posturing into present-day slang. And yet the movie has its startling moments, moments with the spark of specificity and the bitter clarity of perspective. Those stabs of the unexpected culminate in an ending that refuses to raise even the mildest or most melancholy flag of redemption.
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