Set along the coast of Korea, where the north meets the south, Kim Ki-duk's 2002 military melodrama follows a platoon of coast guards tasked with patrolling the area at night to ensure that no North Korean spies cross the border into their country. One of these men, First Private Kang, is pretty gung-ho about his work and seems to take things much more seriously than his fellow servicemen. Kang wears camo face paint at night and mans his post with serious determination while many of the other soldiers wonder what it is that they're actually doing there, seeing as there haven't been any spies in the last five years to shoot at.

One night, when a young man named Young-Gil and a local fish seller's pretty young sister wander into a restricted area to get it on near the surf, Kang does his sworn duty and shoots the man dead, unloading his entire magazine into him and then lobbing a grenade at him. Anyone entering this area after dark can be shot, all the locals know this, but they're still shocked and outraged at Kang's actions even though his superior officers reward him with a week's vacation for doing his job. He uses this time to go back to Seoul and visit his girlfriend but she's no longer interested in him once she finds out what he did. When he returns to his base, he's not the same. Something has snapped inside him and it's seeming more and more like he's a loose cannon until he's discharged after being found unfit for duty.

Kang cannot accept the discharge. The military is all he knows, all he cares about at this point and he desperately wants to finish his tour of duty and serve out his last year. It's too late though, he's already been let go and to make matters worse, the fish seller's sister also seems to have lost her mind and has developed a tendency to approach the soldiers at night and, perhaps mistaking them for her lost love, have sex with them while on duty near the ocean where he was killed.

Atypical for a Kim Ki-duk film, Coast Guard is a fairly talky film that moves in a different way than his other films do. The messed up romance aspect is still there as are the incredibly blunt character changes that always occur throughout his films, and there's a woman running around sleeping with people for completely unusual reasons, but this film is way more political than anything I've had the pleasure of seeing from the director to date. With mandatory military service still required in South Korea, one has to wonder if aspects of the film are autobiographical at least in a sense, as Kim Ki-duk did do his time serving as a marine for five years.

Those looking for one of his infamous tales of twisted romance might be a little alienated by the subject matter and at times the film drags a little bit in the middle becoming a bit predictable even, but the last half hour of the film makes up for that and pacing issues aside, Coast Guard is still a pretty interesting ride. The strongest points are the characters of the fish seller's sister and Kang himself as they slowly but surely lose their minds. Though we see it coming very early on with Kang and it happens quite quickly with him, the progression of madness within the female character is much more interesting and much more unusual in how she chooses to act – at times very passive and melancholy but able to switch on the raw aggression instantly as witnessed in the scene where she pulls a clever on her brother, the only one who really seems to care about her.

Another interesting aspect of the film is that there are no clear villains in the story. Kang has been conditioned to do his job and when he does it, it's he who pays the consequences for it, not those who made him the way he is. Sure he may have been high strung but given the conditions under which he served, it's at least a little understandable. He does snap and he does go way too far and he probably shouldn't have shot the drunk fornicator on the beach but it is what he was instructed to do, and he was simply carrying out his duty as a coast guard. This makes for an interesting contrast and some interesting character development as we watch him start to take it out on his comrades and later on civilians as well.

NOTE: Fish lovers might want to skip this one despite the fact that it's quite a good movie. As with The Isle, some of our little aquatic buddies are mistreated and killed on camera. We're not talking Cannibal Holocaust of Africa Addio type carnage here or anything, but being conscious of the fact that real life animal violence does upset plenty of people (perfectly understandable), I figure it should be mentioned.

The DVD

Video:

Tartan presents Coast Guard in a 1.85.1 anamorphic widescreen transfer that is decent, but far from flawless. The black levels are just a slight bit on the muddy side and some of the fine detail is lost in the nighttime scenes (of which there are many). The colors are a tad on the flat side but skin tones manage to look natural and lifelike. There aren't any problems with mpeg compression and edge enhancement, while present, is very slight and not overly problematic. Print damage isn't an issue though there is some noticeable moderate grain present in many of the scenes.