Color, R (mature themes, violence, strong language), 110 min., DVD only $24.99, French and Korean with English subtitles
DVD: director's commentary, three featurettes
Street: Feb. 14, Prebook: Jan. 24
First Run: L, Jan. 2006, <$1 mil.
Cast: Gam Woo-sung (Spider Forest), Son Byung-ho, Oh Tae-kyung (Take Care of My Cat), Park Won-sang (Spider Forest)
Director: Kong Su-chang
TARTAN
Story Line: A rag-tag unit of Korean soldiers is assigned to discover the fate of a missing squad believed to have disappeared in a haunted area nicknamed "R-Point." Once there, they encounter spirits, receive radio transmissions from dead Korean and French soldiers and eventually turn on each other.
Bottom Line: A skillful fusion of a mega-macho war pic and Asian ghost story, R-Point is certain to delight viewers who enjoy both sprays of machine-gun fire and eerie specters that bleed from the eyes. The characters are all types common to war movies: the playboy, the coward, the family man and the combat vet. The fact that their unit is a Korean one in Vietnam during the Vietnam War might be confusing for American viewers, but one has to simply accept the concept and proceed straight on to the thrills, chills and gunplay. The film's dialog contains its share of howlers—the playboy jazzman character at one point proclaims himself "godfather of all the bitches"—but R-Point's finest sequences are those that are creepy purely through silence, as when a soldier finds himself lost amid the perennially marching dead members of the missing squad.