JSA is a film of bizarre proportions: the biggest budget film to come out of Korea and the most commercially successful, yet an intimate, character-driven drama. The film telescopes the psychic damage wrought by the entire Cold War into the lives of five small people. A mystery wrapped in a conundrum, the movie starts with a present-day incident on the border that leaves a group of both North and South Korean soldiers either wounded or dead and opens up a door into the past. Alternately tragic and hilarious, this larger-than-life film finds a strong human element to examine the conflicted nature of modern Korean identity.