I found it sitting there at blockbuster and I grabbed it for the hell of it and was pleasantly surprised. This was one of the first Korean movies I saw and was completely blown away. Just about everything in this movie is done right. The story is extremely well told and interesting. Its a really intense/serious movie, but does not take itself TOO serious like so many movies and is quite often light hearted and comical. The acting really stands out in this movie, the performances are flawless. PLEASE see this movie. Rent it, buy it, borrow it. You will NOT be disappointed.

One of my favorite movies. Normally I ain't into all the "friendship" theme movies, but this one has way much more and didn't approach the whole "friendship" issue that... touchy touchy. A must-see for everyone, don't base the movie off the fact that its Korean. Its a jewel really.

I have never seen a movie from Korea before. After this, it made me realized the deep influence of Confucius. If I am not wrong, he is the one who said that everyone should be royal to his friends. It is quite similar to some of the movies made in Hong Kong. Whenever they have gangsters in the movies, those gangsters always seem to be tough towards their nemesis, but nice, tender, royal towards their own friends. I think that it is dangerous to present that idea to the youth. Sure, gangsters are human; they have friends, parents, etc. It does not matter what kind of background they come from, once they become members of gangsters. They are the enemies of the society. When teenagers see the movie, they will have wrong impression that it is ok to be gangsters as long as you are still royal to your own friends. One of the guy really looked like one of the Chinese dissident – Wei JingShen. They all look a little older to be high school students. Their acting skills are quite good. I think the first hour was boring. There were no ups or downs. The last hour was a little too graphic. You can see blood, killing with knives, etc. It is an emotional movie, however, I don't want to watch again.

As mentioned in the earlier comment here, this movie is beautifully filmed with great cinematography, but...The first half (before two of the friends went to colleges elsewhere) of the movie brilliantly portrayed the relationships between these four friends and their differences. However, the second half of the story is not as good as the first. Sure, it illustrated the friendship between "Sang-taek" and "Joon-suk" and the parting of "Joon-suk" and "Dong-su" in great details, but we never see the two college-goers involve in the conflicts between "Joon-suk" and "Dong-su".I'm disappointed that "Joong-ho" did not get a chance to further develop the character and the involvement in the conflict (e.g. which side of the conflict did he sided with?). He became just a comic relieve type of character in the movie, which is sad. They movie could have developed all four characters around their life-long bond in a more balanced and thorough way.The friendship between "Sang-taek" and "Joon-suk" can be touching at moments. "Joon-suk" took care of "Sang-taek" took care of each others from time to time, and at the end "Sang-taek" never leave his friend (obviously "Joon-suk" was heading for an execution) even though he killed one of them.At the end of the movie "Joon-suk" said something like: "... I thought Joon-suk and Dong-su were together on the same path..." (I watched the movie with Chinese subtitle... so hopefully the translation did not loose the original meaning). They are until the end. "Dong-su" always want to be at the same position of "Joon-suk". That's the tragedy of the four.I'm relieved that it doesn't emphasize around the action scenes (they are brief but stunning none the less) as some of the Hong Kong movies of the same sort. This movie is not just about gangsters' war.This is a good movie to watch if you are tired of the usual Hollywood flicks. However, it lacks just a little bit to make it into a truly great movie.