Friend (film)

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Friend
Directed by	Kwak Kyung-taek
Written by	Kwak Kyung-taek
Starring	Jang Dong-gun Yu Oh-sung Seo Tae-wha Jung Wo-hyun Kim Bo-kyeong
Release date(s)	March 31, 2001 (South Korea)
Running time	118 min.
Language	Korean
IMDb profile
Korean name
Hangul:	친구
Hanja:	親舊
Revised Romanization:	Chin'gu
McCune-Reischauer:	Ch'in'gu

Friend (친구 chin-gu) is a 2001 South Korean film directed by Kwak Kyung-taek. At one time, it was the highest-grossing Korean movie of all time, but has since been surpassed by Silmido and Taegukgi.

This film is the director's experience about his friends, a semi-autobiography set in his hometown, Busan, and the actors speak with a strongly accented Busan dialect. The film changed the public images of Jang Dong-gun and Yu Oh-sung; previously, Jang had been famous for romantic comedies and Yu had appeared in movies with mostly cult interest.

[edit] Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The film follows the lives of four childhood friends: Jung-sook, whose father is a powerful gangster; Dong-su, whose father is an undertaker; class clown Jung-ho; and Sang-taek, who was an exemplary student. As children they play together, sell sexual explicit pictures cut from a magazine, and wonder if a Korean Olympic swimmer could outrace a sea turtle. Jung-ho also showed the rest of them a VCR that his mother had, and this film he found on it. It turns out to be a pornographic movie, and the boys are entranced while arguing over what a "menstruation" was, with them believing that it was the word that adults used to describe the "vagina".

Fast forward to high school, where they are reunited after separating during middle school. They become smitten with the lead singer of a band of girls their age. Jung-sook invites the band to a party at his house, where each boy pairs off with one girl (though not after some tension over how to do so). Sang-taek receives his first kiss from the lead singer, Jin-sook.

Back in school, Jung-sook and Dong-su get in trouble after a confrontation with a teacher; After their friends convince them to go apologize, they are only off with a light suspension. During an outing to the movies, where Sang-taek catches the eye of another school gangster whom he had picked a fight with earlier, Jung-sook and Dong-su fend off a whole rival school while Jung-ho protects Sang-taek. Dong-su, after the fight, returns with a baseball bat and smashes the school's glass cases with its awards and trophies, dropping out of school and warning anyone who bumps into the street will "pay". Jung-sook is suspended from the affair. After graduation, Sang-taek and Jung-ho go to college but the others do not.

A few years later Sang-taek and Jung-ho return to find Jung-sook married to Jin-sook, the singer from the band. He is seriously ill and abusive towards his wife as a result of being addicted to philopon; he also appears depressed that his father is dying. Later he recovers from his illness, divorces his wife, and mourns his father. He assumes his father's role as a crime lord. Dong-su also becomes a gangster with a rival organization, and becomes similarly powerful.

The men stay friends, drinking, singing karaoke, and eating galbi together. An assassination attempt on Dong-su, however, sours relations and leads to a gang war between Jung-sook and Dong-su. After a night of karaoke and celebration with Sang-take and Jung-ho, Jung-sook goes to visit Dong-su at his base. Jung-sook talks to Dong-su as if nothing has happened, and asks if he would like to accompany him to see Sung-taek off, since he was heading to the United States. Dong-su, however, does not want to, and Jung-sook becomes serious. Jung-sook asks Dong-su as a friend to leave for Hawaii for a few years until things cooled down, Dong-su, however, refuses and asks Jung-sook to leave. Jung-sook, realizing that he and Dong-su weren't friends anymore, as friends would do what other friends asked, agrees with him and leaves to say farewell to Sung-taek and to head off to Hawaii.

What Dong-su did not realize was that Jung-sook asked him to leave as a friend. After realizing the advice in Jung-sook's message, he decides to head off to Hawaii as well. However, since both his pride and his ignorance prevented him from listening to his "friend", with Jung-sook leaving first from the bar gives the signal to kill Dong-su when he leaves. Dong-su is then murdered in the streets by his driver, and many other agents of Jung-sook.

A few years later, Sung-taek returns to Korea upon hearing news on Dong-su's murder and Jung-sook being on trial for it. Jung-ho explains how Jung-sook had left for Hawaii after Sung-take left, and how after a few years he became weaker and weaker and finally went nuts. After being caught in a bar for fighting with the waiters, and breaking bottles as well as gashing his own arm. Jung-sook goes to trial for Dong-su's murder, and even after Jung-ho gets the jurors bribed, Jung-sook pleads guilty. He did this, because right when Dong-su refused to leave for Hawaii when Jung-sook asked him to as a friend, their ties as friends were cut, and their ties as rival gangsters rose. Since Jung-sook maintains this pride, the pride of a ganster, he admits to arranging the death of Dong-su.

After the trial, Sung-taek visits Jung-sook in prison, and the two talk like old friends who haven't seen each other. When the time comes for Jung-sook to leave to go back to his jail cell, Sung-taek asks why he killed him. Jung-sook simply replies, "Humilation. Me and Dong-su are gangsters. Gangsters shouldn't be humilated", tying in the notion that those two indeed, weren't friends anymore. Sung-taek and Jung-sook then part ways, with Sung-taek promising to visit every month. The film ends with Jung-sook walking back to his cell, in a hallway with a white bright light in the end, with Jung-sook reflecting on the past when they were all children, wondering who would win in a race, the Korean Olympic swimmer or a sea turtle, when they were all still friends.