My Way
Short description
Two men driven to compete as marathon runners in Korea under Japanese colonial rule find their rivalry overtaken by history. Jun-shik, a Korean, and Tatsuo, a Japanese athlete, are pulled into the Second World War on opposing sides of an occupation, and the conflict follows them through conscription, capture and forced service far from home. What begins as a race between individuals becomes a struggle to survive shifting armies and distant battlefields, with the two meeting again in Europe as the war nears its end. The story draws on the case of Yang Kyoungjong, a Korean found in German uniform in Normandy.
Kang Je-kyu directed and co-wrote the film with Na Hyun and Kim Byung-In, following his earlier features Shiri and Tae Guk Gi: The Brotherhood of War; his next directorial credit would be Road to Boston. Jang Dong-gun and Joe Odagiri lead as the two runners, with Fan Bingbing, Kim In-kwon, Lee Yeon-hee and Kim Hee-won among the credited cast of 26 and crew of 55. The production carried a budget of about 24 million USD and returned roughly 17 million USD worldwide.
Audience response has been warm, with the film rated 7.6 out of 10 on IMDb from about 13,000 votes and 7.9 out of 10 on TMDB from 464 votes. A critics' rating of 4.8 out of 10 from 16 reviews places professional assessment well below that viewer approval.
What's left behind the scenes
- The idea for the film came about thanks to a photograph from World War II depicting a Korean soldier in a German army uniform. The photograph was taken in 1944 in Normandy.
- Filming began on October 15, 2010 and ended on June 12, 2011.
- Initially, the film was planned to be shot in China, Mongolia, and Russia, but due to various reasons (weather, accommodation for the film crew and actors, the cost of filming, and so on), the majority of the film was decided to be shot in South Korea.
- Originally, Son Ye-jin was supposed to play the main female role, but due to changes in the script, she left the project before filming began.
- The film features dialogue in 5 languages.
- Models of the Soviet BT-5 and BT-7 tanks were made using the chassis of old American light tanks, the M24 Chaffee and M41 Walker Bulldog.
- Scenes at the beginning of the film (showing Gyeongseong during the Japanese occupation) were shot in Hapcheon County, South Gyeongsang Province in the south of the Korean Peninsula. Scenes of the prisoner-of-war labor camp near Perm were filmed in the mountains of Chonoksan National Park in Gangwon Province on the east coast of South Korea. The most versatile filming location was the area enclosed by the Saemangeum Dam from the Yellow Sea – a plain with an area of 401 sq. km.
- The director was determined to film the Normandy landings in Europe. For almost two years, a special part of the film crew studied information about dozens of locations on the coasts of the Caspian, Mediterranean, and Black Seas, but ultimately the choice fell on the Latvian coast of the Baltic Sea.
- The film is based on the story of Korean Yang Gyeong-jon, who was captured on June 6, 1944, by American troops after the Normandy landings. Prior to this, Yang Gyeong-jon served in the Japanese Imperial Army, units of the Red Army, and the Wehrmacht.
- During the attack on Dedovsk (1941), the Germans used MG-42 machine guns against the Koreans, despite the fact that they were adopted for service a year later.
- The initial version of the script was written in 2007 under the working title “D-Day”.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
