Historical importance can’t cover for a lame propaganda flick. Know how you don’t watch these for deep characters? Well, I hope you don’t mind one dimensional militaristic mouth pieces for the dictatorship of the RoK ballooning the runtime with speed run melodrama. We’re talking zero build up to catharsis. We are merry one scene and mournful the next, presumably the recent memory of the U.S. proxy war in the peninsula filling in the blanks. The rest is about as dull as it’s likely to get grandpa to pipe up with “they don’t make them like they used to.” 

To be fair, aircraft are inherently un-cinematic and when that’s the focal point for the spectacle you’re in trouble, the resources of the military on screen be damned. Indeed, the filmmakers visibly struggle to capture live munitions on camera as billowing black smoke obscures the fireworks & the cameraman shakily swings between targets. The depiction of the surface-to-air rescue did have me in chuckles, so I can’t say I was never entertained.