This one starts off awfully with a shot of a CGI owl flying across a CGI moon and just gets better from there. Shades of RASHOMON in the fragmented story of an incident at the DMZ which leaves a number of soldiers on both sides dead and injured. An investigator is called in to piece together what happened, so the back story then plays out and a compelling one it is too. Park Chan-wook offers us a searing critique of not only North/South Korean politics but also the human race as a whole. Both Lee Byung-hun and Song Kang-ho offer star-making performances in a slow-burning tale that gradually builds to a devastating climax.

In 2009, director Quentin Tarantino placed JSA amongst his top twenty films since 1992. Directed by Park Chan-wook, who also made Oldboy, this film tells the tale of a fatal shooting within the DMZ that exists between the borders of North and South Korea.

At one point the highest-grossing film in Korean history, JSA is the story of the fragile friendship that starts between four soldiers who are on opposite sides. Yet why did two of the North's soldiers get killed and why are the stories so inconsistent? That's what a neutral Swiss team of investigators wants to figure out.

Sergeant Lee Soo-hyeok (Lee Byung-hun, Storm Shadow in the G.I. Joe movies) is a South Korean soldier who has run back to his own country, rescued by his own troops and potentially guilty of shooting three North Korean soldiers, leaving two dead. He claims that he was kidnapped.

One of the dead, Jeong Woo-jin (Shin Ha-kyun, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance) was shot eight times, which doesn't seem like self-defense. And one of the other South Korean troops, Jeong Woo-jin (Shin Ha-kyun), suddenly tries to commit suicide.

The truth is that for some time, the men had all been friends. In fact, the surviving soldiers and Woo-jin were attempting to protect one another, something that had been happening since Kyeong-pil and Woo-jin saved Soo-hyeok from one of their land mines.

Yet can even the truth - once discovered - save anyone? This is a tense exploration of the divide that exists between people who are not all that different.

This is a tense watch and one that will anger you by the close. I have no idea how to save the world. All I know is to watch movies.

Korea is a divided country and Panmunjom, where North meets South, is an area where tension inevitably runs high. When a shooting incident there leaves two Northern soldiers dead, Major. Sophie E. Jean, (the gorgeous Yeong-ae Lee) of the Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission, is called in to head the investigation. A South Korean soldier, Sgt. Lee Soo-hyeok (Byung-hun Lee), takes responsibility for the killings, claiming he was kidnapped by the North, and that he shot the men as he attempted to escape.

But as Sophie slowly unravels the truth, she learns that the reality is far more tragic and, in a series of flashbacks, we get to witness the events leading up to the shooting: Sgt. Lee straying into the Northern half of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) and accidentally treading on a mine; his rescue by 'the enemy'—two guards who work a stone's throw from Lee's own post, just on the other side of the border; and Lee's eventual friendship with his rescuers, which sees him crossing into the North at night to spend time with his new pals.

After a while, Lee introduces his trusted workmate to his new 'brothers'. The four become close friends, and spend time together drinking, gambling and playing games—that is until the night when their secret is discovered and things go remarkably pear-shaped!

I first experienced the work of director Chan-wook Park when I watched the brilliant Oldboy (2003)—a gripping, violent and bloody tale of revenge. My next choice was Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance, which was made one year previous to Oldboy, but which failed to impress me as much.

JSA was made in 2000, and I feared that, possibly, I might like this even less, since the subject matter didn't particularly appeal to me. I needn't have worried: Joint Security Area is a magnificent film that tells a gripping story whilst also delivering a poignant message about the stupidity of war.

Beautifully shot and carefully pieced together, this amazing film builds slowly, but surely, until the compelling ending when tragedy inevitably strikes. Only the slightly confusing 'shootout scene' at the end of the film stops me from giving this film a perfect 10, although one does not need to fully understand the details of this moment to recognise the brilliance of JSA, nor feel its powerful message.