My Way
Kang Je Gyu
The story: Korean Joon Sik (Jang Dong Gun) and Ja- panese Tatsuo (Joe Odagiri) are marathon competitors in a sensitive time and place – Seoul under Japanese occupation in 1938. After things go awry at one contest, Joon Sik is conscripted into the Japanese Imperial Army as punishment. It would be the first of several army uniforms from different countries that he dons as he seeks to stay alive in World War II. Eventually, he crosses paths with Tatsuo again.

Guns N' Roses
Ning Hao
The story: Against the backdrop of Japanese military aggression in China in the 1930s, Xiao Dongbei (Lei Jiayin) survives by his quick wit. He unwittingly gets roped into a scheme by an underground resistance group to pull off a robbery of Japanese gold bullion.

My Way and Guns N’ Roses take different approaches to the war movie. Both are only intermittently successful.
Despite the assertive title, My Way takes the more familiar route and offers up heroes and stirring deeds.
While Korean A-lister Jang is too old at 40 to be playing a young rickshaw puller, you have to admire the fact that he is fit enough to do so. As a man holding on steadfastly to his morals in the midst of war, Jang fares better.
Director Kang Je Gyu also handles the epic battle scenes with the kind of assurance you would expect from the man behind the Korean War blockbuster hit Taegukgi (2004). He is able to zoom in and pan out, capturing the bewilderment of being in the thick of action and also conveying the devastating scale of destruction.
My Way was actually inspired by the astonishing true story of a Korean man in German uniform captured by the Americans at Normandy beach in 1944. It transpired that he had been forced to serve the Japanese army, captured by the Soviets in Manchuria and then captured again by the Germans.
Such an extraordinary tale is apparently not enough for Kang to build a movie around. He felt it necessary to include Joon Sik and Tatsuo’s rivalry-turned- bromance, which turns unintentionally comedic when the two meet again on a beach and actually start running towards each other.
On the other hand, it would have been nice to have more laughs in Guns N’ Roses. As it is, the film feels like a lite version mo lei tau, the Hong Kong absurd comedy sub-genre made famous by Stephen Chow. It does not reach the heights of silly comedy in All The Wrong Spies (1983), which took the Japanese resistance plot element and just ran with it. Nor does it have the zing or satisfying heft of Jiang Wen’s Let The Bullets Fly (2010).
The tone of Guns N’ Roses also lurches from comedy to romance to suspense and serious drama, with Ning Hao, writer- director of the hit comedy Crazy Stone (2006), unable to juggle them smoothly to convincingly tell the story of one man’s political awakening.
Still, actor Lei Jiayin makes for a likable rascal and there is one laugh-out- loud scene when he has to hide from his pursuers in a church.
Former synchronised swimmer Tao Hong also leaves an impression as the glamorous actress Fang Die who is also the cool-headed leader of the resistance group. It helps that this is a far more substantive role than Fan Bingbing’s shoehorned cameo in My Way as a prisoner of war.
In both films, the Japanese, by dint of history, are cast as the villains. Guns N’ Roses’ Toriyama (Keiichi Yamasaki) is a cruel soldier whose villainy runs the gamut from chilling to almost cartoonish, while My Way’s Tatsuo is a more nuanced character.
Though by the time Tatsuo ends up in a German uniform, My Way suddenly morphs into a war film with an intractable mystery: How does Joe Odagiri get to keep his lovely head of hair in war time?
(ST)