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Historically speaking, the Korean War has been referred to as the forgotten war due to the relative lack of awareness around it, at least compared to World War II and the Vietnam War, which preceded and succeeded it, respectively. Setting aside the larger, more concerning implication that the American public consciousness can feasibly forget one of the most violent, deadliest and sustained events of the Cold War, the cultural effect is that many films focused on the war have similarly faded from memory.
There have been a number of films made about and in relation to the Korean War, many starring prominent actors and made by high-profile filmmakers. Many of these have failed to leave a lasting cultural footprint, even in comparison to reality minor films made about other wars, and some are often incorrectly associated with those other wars as well. The best of these movies deserve to be in the same conversation as the best war movies ever made, but many have continued to be relegated to obscurity. These are the ten greatest masterpieces made about the Korean War that should not be forgotten.
10
‘Devotion’ (2022)
The most recent Korean War movie that most people didn’t see and likely didn’t even know was set during the war is Devotion. Based on a true story, the film follows the friendship between two Naval officers (Glen Powell and Jonathan Majors), one of them the sole Black officer in their squadron. It’s a straightforward story that doesn’t stray far from the expected path but is unexpectedly more nuanced, thanks to both the lead performances and the creative voice behind the camera.
J.D. Dillard has been a quietly rising voice in cinema, previously directing Sleight and Sweetheart, both of which are more clever than they have any right to be. Devotion was the director’s first foray into more conventional studio fare with a much bigger budget, and he passed the test with flying colors. Devotion may not break any new narrative ground, but it subtly avoids the many pitfalls films of the same ilk have fallen into in the past. By having a Black filmmaker behind the camera, the film doesn’t placate white audiences or try to assuage their guilt but instead keeps the focus on the characters as individuals.
9
‘War Hunt’ (1962)
For a film that was the first major starring role for Hollywood icon Robert Redford and which stands out from its contemporaries with a plot that weaves war drama with dark psychological thriller elements, War Hunt remains surprisingly obscure. It’s a film concerned with the trauma caused by warfare as well as moral compromises made during wartime. War Hunt predates many of the films that would more directly grapple with PTSD, particularly those that came after the fallout of the Vietnam War, but approaches its heady themes with B-movie intentions.
Redford plays a fresh-faced soldier who joins an embattled company on the front lines in the waning days of the war. He immediately clocks the nocturnal activities of another soldier, who routinely sneaks behind enemy lines and performs ritualistic killings. These actions are somewhat tolerated by leadership due to the information they gain from him. War Hunt is a surprisingly haunting thriller, made all the more effective thanks to the performances by Redford, John Saxon as the killer soldier, and Sydney Pollack as the blind-eyed sergeant. Pollack and Redford would continue to have fruitful collaborations both behind and in front of the camera, and this first on-screen pairing is worthy of both their stellar filmographies.
8
‘Men in War’ (1957)
Anthony Mann was a director with a deft touch that allowed him to move between genres with ease. He directed noirs, Westerns, and epics with equal success. His work also extended to the war genre, best exemplified by the succinctly titled Men in War, a gritty, stripped-down combat drama. Based on the WWII novel Day Without End, later retitled Combat, by Van Van Praag, the film updated the setting to the more contemporary Korean War but kept its core plot of a battle-weary platoon fighting like hell to reach a hill where reinforcements await.
As a low-budget effort, Men in War is relatively small-scale, unable to accomplish the scope of similar combat films of its era, but its limitations are a blessing in disguise. The story boils down to the conflict of two men, the battle-hardened but pragmatic Lieutenant Benson, played by professional hard man Robert Ryan, and the cold-blooded Sergeant Montana, played by professional tough guy Aldo Ray. The men’s differing approaches to the war effort put them at odds, but they’re forced to come together to overcome the forces mounting against them. The devil is in the details in this effective war thriller.
7
‘Welcome to Dongmakgol’ (2005)
There are more than just the films that tell stories from the American side of the war, and the more comedically slanted Welcome to Dongmakgol offers a refreshing perspective. It follows several soldiers from both North and South Korea, as well as an American airman, who individually find their way to a mountain village where the inhabitants are isolated from the outside world, and thus blissfully unaware of the ongoing war.
Based on the play of the same name by Jang Jin, who also helped craft the film’s script, Welcome to Donmakgol plays with the conventions of war films in surprisingly poignant ways. The ignorance of the villagers of the violent ways of the soldiers leads to unexpected humor where conflict should be, and the soldiers themselves must reckon with their actions and the effect it ends up having on the innocents. If you need a viewing respite from the bloodshed and carnage, take a lovely little visit to this near-perfect yet forgotten war film.
6
‘The Bridges at Toko-Ri’ (1954)
Based on the novel of the same name and released not long after the end of the Korean War, The Bridges at Toko-Ri is a tense drama that fully engages with the public ambivalence toward the war and the silent damage it caused to those who fought it. It’s a perspective that generally wasn’t shared by the WWII films from the same era, which were all much more assured in their position that the war was fought for the right reasons. As directed by Mark Robson, The Bridges at Toko-Ri is about men fighting the wrong war, at the wrong place, at the wrong time.
Hollywood legend and actual WWII vet William Holden plays Lt. Brubaker, a Navy pilot called back into action to lead a daring attack on the titular structures. His hesitance is compounded by his inability to explain his duty to his wife, played by Grace Kelly, and that feeling permeates the film all the way to its somber, tragic ending. The Bridges at Toko-Ri features strong performances and some effective aerial footage combined with miniature photography, which helped win the film an Academy Award for Best Special Effects. It’s a more complex war drama that shades its mission-based storyline and the heroism of its characters with the kind of doubt and criticism that was uncommon in war films at the time.
5
‘The Steel Helmet’ (1951)
The gritty determination and moral relativity that defined so many of the greatest Korean War films can all be traced to the first American film made about the war, Samuel Fuller‘s The Steel Helmet. Fuller was a veteran of WWII, and he often imbued his war films with a grim authenticity, even while engaging with the pulp sensibilities inherent to his work. The film focuses on a small squad of American soldiers who take shelter in a Buddhist temple. They include embattled Sergeant Zack (Gene Evans), as well as the Black Corporal Thompson (James Edwards), and the Japanese-American Sergeant Tanaka (Richard Loo).
The diversity of the cast is pointed out, as the film specifically targets American bigotry and even references the often-overlooked internment of Japanese-American citizens during WWII. Fuller was criticized for the comments that were included in the film, as well as the violent actions taken by some of its characters, which he argued were based directly on actions he witnessed during his time in combat. The Steel Helmet is a gripping, hard-boiled war film elevated by the director’s unflinching approach to the material.
4
‘Pork Chop Hill’ (1959)
One of the best known films about the Korean War due largely to its cast of recognizable actors led by movie star Gregory Peck, Pork Chop Hill is based on the controversial real-life battle of the titular location. The human loss of that ultimately futile battle over a location that served no strategic purpose is reflected in the film, which features much of the same harrowing action as in director Lewis Milestone‘s previous war masterpiece, All Quiet on the Western Front, for which he won an Academy Award. While Pork Chop Hill may be more conventional than that classic WWI drama, it is no less engaging for its portrayal of soldiers as pawns in a game of war.
Peck plays real-life soldier Joseph Clemons, who also served as a technical adviser on the film and was the central subject of the book by S.L.A. Marshall on which it was based. Ordered to take and hold the titular hill, which serves only as a bargaining tool in the ongoing peace negotiations for the Korean Armistice Agreement, Clemons and his company succeed, but at the cost of many lives, leaving them highly vulnerable to further attack. Pork Chop Hill isn’t as outwardly angry in its indictment of the futility of war as some other Korean War films, but it still manages to effectively communicate the determination and rancor of the soldiers.
3
‘Taegukgi: The Brotherhood of War’ (2004)
As unflinching a portrayal of the Korean War as any other, Taegukgi: The Brotherhood of War tells a story about the corrupting violence of war through the eyes of two South Korean brothers conscripted together. The film was an overwhelming success in South Korea, but only a minor release in the States. It deserves just as much attention as the American-made efforts for its brazenly emotional approach to the subject matter and its suitably violent execution.
Brothers Lee Jin-tae (Jang Dong-gun) and Lee Jin-seok (Won Bin) are conscripts in the South Korean army, where the elder Jin-tae does everything he can to get his brother released from service. In the process, Jin-tae himself begins to lose sight of his humanity, becoming a war machine without remorse. Circumstances of the war eventually led to both brothers fighting on opposite sides, and the bloodshed was effectively brutal. These kinds of brother-turned-enemy plotlines are not uncommon in war films, but the tense direction by Kang Je-gyu and the performances by the two lead actors prevent Taegukgi from ever feeling rote. It’s a necessary Korean War film of powerful substance.
2
‘M*A*S*H’ (1970)
Though it is often mistaken as a Vietnam War film, and its place in pop culture has been subsumed by the massively popular television series that followed it, Robert Altman‘s M*A*S*H is still a darkly funny and subversive satire of war, featuring the same improvisational style and overlapping dialogue that was a trademark of the filmmaker. Based on the novel by Richard Hooker, which detailed the exploits of the members of a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital during the Korean War, the film took more direct aim at the American military complex of the Vietnam War, which was still raging at the time of the film’s production.
Elliot Gould, Donald Sutherland, and Tom Skerritt play three surgeons with an adolescent sense of humor and a disdain for authority. When they aren’t actually repairing injured infantry, they’re busy playing juvenile pranks and playing games. There’s a definite undercurrent of misogyny in the film’s raunchier moments, which shares more in common with the sex comedies that would become popular in the latter half of the decade than it does with the film’s sharper anti-establishment satire. It’s not Altman’s greatest film, but it’s still one of the funniest war movies ever made.
1
‘The Manchurian Candidate’ (1962)
The shadow of the Korean War looms large over the plot and characters of the tautly made thriller The Manchurian Candidate. Directed by John Frankenheimer and based on the Richard Condon novel, the political thriller focuses on two veterans of the war, one who has been brainwashed to become a sleeper agent and another who must unravel the deep conspiracy. A Cold War classic, the film plays both on the fears embedded within that conflict while simultaneously satirizing the panic behind McCarthyism. It’s a smart, unsettling masterpiece.
Frank Sinatra and Laurence Harvey are Bennett Marco and Raymond Shaw, both soldiers of a platoon taken captive during the Korean War. When they return home, Marco begins to suffer nightmares that conflict with his memory, while Shaw is pushed into a political career by his manipulative mother, played by Angela Lansbury in an Oscar-nominated performance, who builds his campaign on inflammatory and baseless rhetoric. While the brainwashing plot may be based on unfounded conspiracy theories, the politics of the film are frighteningly relevant. As a war film, The Manchurian Candidate is less about the battles fought by soldiers with bullets than those fought with words by those who like to wage war but never fight in it.
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William Smith
Almontather Rassoul
