Review of 71: Into the Fire / 포화 속으로, directed by John H. Lee

For those of you who have never set foot virtually into this space, welcome! This is my blog, which serves as an online diary and digital archive of everything I’ve watched, read, and experienced in the past few years. Recently, it has become a source of income for me, and a crux as I faced unexpected unemployment after an opportunity I was told I had fell through. Feel free to click around if you liked this post.

In addition to this become a vital income source while I’m unemployed, I’ve been actually catching up on my content game. There are so many movies, television shows, and books I’ve watched and read throughout the years but never had the chance to review, so while I’ve had the free time, I’m dedicating more time to catching up on these reviews.

That said, this review comes from the distant past. Even before I was writing blog posts and publishing them on the Internet as a form of a digital archive for myself, I was always kind of writing little blurbs and blobs about the movies I was watching. I always wanted to be a critic, and although I achieved that goal, I quit it in April 2024.

I first purchased this movie when I was in high school and hoarded iTunes gift cards in order to buy movies on my account. I was a broke kid then with no money, as I never had a job in high school and focused on writing and soccer. I watched this movie then and wrote a little about it.

It’s now I’m coming back to it and revamping that review, dusting it off and adding more to it in order to show more maturity in the writing. I also rewatched the movie for the heck of it, so this is also a fusion of my adult thoughts as well.

Let’s get into the review—I know I’m rambling enough already.

A story of the student soldiers in South Korea in the midst of the Korean War, especially as they protect the Pusan Perimeter.

The protagonist of this movie os Oh Jang-beom, portrayed by TOP, who is a student. He’s a volunteer soldier during the Korean war, and when the city of Yeongdeok is overrun by North Korean troops, especially the feared 766th Unit, he finds himself the only survivor of a group with a Lieutenant. However, a North Korean soldier fatally wounds the Lieutenant and Jang-beom is left alone.

A group of South Koreans finds them and Jang-beom watches as the Lieutenant dies in the hospital they’re brought to. A Captain named Kang then tells Jang-beom he is going to lead the Student Volunteer Forces because he is one of the few students with combat experience. One of the other volunteers, Kap-jo, rebels against Jang-beom though and screws them over by destroying the food supply.

When thy go out into the world, they’re targeted and ambushed. A lot of the students are killed, and their moral is low after seeing how poorly they handled that. They ask for help from Captain Kang, but the main army and soldiers are at the Nakdong River, and Kang’s superiors say no to giving more assistance to the students.

They’re on their own with the North Koreans approaching, but Kang is allowed to come help them. He brings a few soldiers to the school they’re guarding, but then a student volunteer is captured by the North Koreans and interrogated. They let him go back with one message: the school will be destroyed in two hours unless they surrender.

Kap-jo beats up the kid who was captured then deserts with a friend. They run into a stuck North Korean truck, which they steal. Back at the school, a South Korean flag is waved instead of a white one, and the North Koreans attack. The students hold their own and kill a lot of the enemy, but eventually they are overwhelmed.

It’s at that moment Kap-jo and his friend appear in the truck with weapons, cutting through all the North Korean soldiers. However, most of the students die when Unit 766 arrives, and Jang-beom and Kap-jo, still alive, rush to the roof. There, with the machine guns, they try their hardest to fight off the advancing North Koreans.

Captain Kang then arrives with reinforcements; they begin clearing out the North Korean soldiers. Kap-jo is killed by the North Korean Major, and Jang-beom is heavily wounded. When the Major is killed, Jang-beom dies as Kang tells him everything will be okay. Of the 71 students, 48 died in this battle.

The film then ends with a photographer taking a picture of all of the students, then the survivors, now elders, telling their stories.

Overall Thoughts

This is an important movie, and I know that because I somehow keep thinking about it. When I went to Seoul for the first time when I was 17-18, I went to the museum dedicated to the Korean War. In there they have an entire room dedicated to the student soldiers and the letters they wrote to their parents, which was horrifying to see.

Many did not survive, and I thought of this movie back then. In the American context, we think of grown adults in the Korean War, but there were a lot of student soldiers like the ones we see in this film. It was a war, and South Korea was almost entirely consumed by what happened.

So go watch this movie if you’re interested. It’s a terribly sad one, but it’s important. Sometimes we need to confront history and what happened, even if ti makes us sad.

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