The Front Line
Well Go | Release Date: January 20, 2012 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
59
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 10 Critic Reviews
Positive:
5
Mixed:
5
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
83
Entertainment WeeklyLisa SchwarzbaumJan 18, 2012
This strong, assured Band of Brothers-style drama from director Jang Hun makes universal points about bonding, misery, loyalty, and the senselessness of war through a portfolio of soldiers. Read full review
75
New York PostV.A. MusettoJan 20, 2012
As North Korea undergoes a highly publicized change of leadership, The Front Line proves timely. In fact, one of the movie's army commanders looks like the north's new baby dictator, Kim Jong-un. Read full review
75
The A.V. ClubNoel MurrayJan 18, 2012
The action in The Front Line is bloody and tense, but the movie also reduces war to its simplest terms, defining it in terms of the reluctant soldiers who know that only accidents of birth and location determined which side of the battlefield they inhabit. Read full review
70
Village VoiceErnest HardyJan 17, 2012
Tightly directed and well acted (even though many characters are cut-outs from every war movie you've ever seen), The Front Line shoehorns little known history into a familiar format, and it works. Read full review
65
MovielineMichelle OrangeJan 19, 2012
What ultimately makes the film compelling is the extent to which it uses the shared language of cinema to telegraph the caustic feelings of a people toward their own history. Read full review
60
The New York TimesStephen HoldenJan 19, 2012
A movie that reserves its final sickening wallop for a grueling half-hour that leaves you as emotionally battered as the soldiers are forced to return to hell for one last senseless round. Read full review
50
Los Angeles TimesGlenn WhippJan 20, 2012
Jang and screenwriter Park Sang-yeon recognize the situation's senselessness but can't resist ramping up the melodrama and celebrating the heroism of the battle-fatigued soldiers. These contradictory impulses, combined with the film's undercooked characters, make The Front Line a war movie not quite worth engaging. Read full review
50
Slant MagazineBill WeberJan 17, 2012
Both brutal and sentimental, this Oscar-submitted Korean war drama offers up rusty tropes as telling ironies. Read full review
40
New York Daily NewsJoe NeumaierJan 19, 2012
While its tone and humanity offset the futility of each side's need for one crucial hill, much of this intense, honorable film is too drawn-out. Read full review
40
Time OutDavid FearJan 17, 2012
A huge hit in its native country, Hun Jang's epic doesn't lack for spectacle or incident: In addition to its war-what-is-it-good-for? moralizing, it also piles on bloody battle scenes, subplots involving a sniper and a supply chest, and a nihilistic last-minute twist. What you don't get is the sense that this pumped-up combat-fatigue chronicle is pandering-or, for that matter, particularly original. Read full review
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