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Production Notes
CJ ENTERTAINMENT and SK PLANET Presents, a Directors Production
MY WAY
STARRING
Jang Dong-gun
Joe Odagiri
Fan Bingbing
Kim In-kwon
Written by: Kang Je-kyu and Kim Byung-in
Directed by: Kang Je-kyu
Executive Producers: Miky Lee, So Jin-Woo, and Mu Xiao Guang
Release date: April 20th, 2012 – New York and Los Angeles / Expansion on May 4th
Rated: R
Running time: 143 minutes
Korean, Japanese, Russian, German with English subtitles
Distributed by: CJ Entertainment & PMK*BNC Films
www.mywaymovie2012.com
Press Contacts:
New York
Nina Baron – – 212.373.6150
Lee Meltzer – – 212.373.6142
Lindsay Firestone – – 212.373.6131
Marian Koltai-Levine – – 212.373.6130
Los Angeles
Rachel Aberly – – 310.854.4812
Morgan Ressa – – 310.854.4885
Nicole Almira – - 310.854.4897
“My Way”
CAST
Tatsuo / Joe Odagiri
Shirai / Fan Bingbing
Jong-dae / Kim In-kwon
Chunbok / Kim Hee-won
Kwangchun / Oh Tae-kyung
Minwoo / Kwak Jung-uk
Jun-shik’s Father / Cheon Ho-jin
Sohn Ki-Jung / Yoon Hee-won
Noda / Yamamoto Taro
Mukai / Hamada Manabu
Takakura / Tsurumi Shingo
Tatsuo’s Grandfather / Natsuyagi Isao
Tatsuo’s Father / Sano Shiro
Tatsuo’s Mother / Nakamura Kumi
Special Appearances by
Man with Microphone / Kim Su-roEun-soo / Lee Yeon-hee
League President / Hakuryu
Press Conference Attendant / Nicole (Kara)
High Ranking Banquet Official / Yang Jin-suk
FILMMAKERS
Screenwriter / Kang Je-kyu
Kim Byung-in
Executive Producers / Miky Lee
So Jin-woo
Mu Xiao Guang
Producers / Kang Je-kyu
Kim Yong-hwa
Line Producers / Tomas Makaras
Son Min-gyu
Cinematography / Lee Mo-gae
Editing / Park Gok-ji
Production Design / Joh Geun-hyun
Costume Design / Kim Jong-won
Original Music / Lee Dong-jun
Special Effects / Jung Do-ahn
“My Way”
Short synopsis
After emerging as bitter rivals and enemies as young marathon runners, Korean native Kim Jun-shik and Japanese aristocrat Tatsuo Hasegawa both find themselves in the Japanese army, fighting the Chinese and Soviets in a bloody battle. Jun-shik is there under duress, while Tatsuo is a powerful colonel. After both are taken prisoner by the Soviets, their mutual hatred and mistrust boils over into a violence that is only stopped by the continuing horror of the war. Forced to fight for the Soviets, the two eventually rely on each other for survival, making it to Germany, where they are in turn separated and forced to fight for the Nazis. They meet again at Normandy Beach, both unlikely survivors, bonded together by history as they struggle to survive one more terrible battle as the Allies arrive on D-Day.
Long Synopsis
1936: when athlete Sohn Ki-jung becomes the first Korean to ever earn a medal at the Olympics, taking the gold in the prestigious marathon event, it is an inspiration to the Korean people, who are under Japanese occupation. Particularly inspired is young Kim Jun-shik, whose father works as a servant for a prominent Japanese official. But he has a new rival – Tatsuo Hasegawa, the official’s grandson, newly arrived from Tokyo, who has dreams of marathon glory himself. The two become intense competitors, trading championships while training for the 1940 games in Tokyo.
But in 1938, the Japanese authorities rule that Koreans are ineligible for the Olympics. After public outcry, Jun-shik is allowed to compete. At the finish line of the qualifying competition, Jun-shik edges out Tatsuo – only to be disqualified for defending himself against a Japanese runner who tried to trip him. A riot ensues, involving Jun-shik and his best friend, Jong-dae. Their punishment, handed out by a Japanese judge, is to be conscripted into the Japanese army. Meanwhile, Tatsuo rejects his father’s advice of medical school and chooses instead to fight for his native Japan.
Two years later, Jun-shik and his friends are little more than slaves in the bloody battle with the Soviets and Chinese at the Mongolian border. Used as little more than pawns and ordered to fight to the death, off the battle field they are humiliated by the Japanese soldiers, who treat them like dogs. After a particularly disastrous battle, Tatsuo, now a powerful colonel, arrives to take command. When Jun-shik refuses to go along on a suicide mission, he is thrown in detention to be executed, alongside a female Chinese sniper, Shirai. That night, Jun-shik’s friends spring him and Shirai from custody, and at dawn they all escape. But when Jun-shik sees Soviet tanks on the horizon, he decides to return to the Japanese camp to warn them. In the battle that ensues, thousands of Japanese die as Tatsuo commands them all to rush forward and sacrifice themselves for the Emperor and glory of Japan. Jun-shik pleads with Tatsuo to stop and order a retreat, but Tatsuo refuses. He drags Jun-shik towards the fray…
The next thing either man knows, they are in a crowded transport bound for a frozen Soviet POW camp. At the camp, Jun-shik finds his friend Jong-dae – now called “Anton” – in charge of the prisoners and swearing fealty to the Soviet cause. Now, it is the Koreans who can mistreat the Japanese, which Jong-dae seems to delight in to the point of sadistic cruelty. Jun-shik and Tatsuo are clear enemies, but as each of them observe the horrors of the camp – men with frostbite are thrown in incinerators to die – they start to form a bond. Soon, word comes of the Germans attacking the Russians in the west, and the prisoners are given an ultimatum: fight for the USSR or die. Reluctantly, Jun-shik and Tatsuo don Soviet uniforms.
In another vicious battle, Tatsuo sees first-hand how absurd it is to order men to sacrifice themselves for a losing cause, as the Soviets are massacred by the Nazis for a small section of land. Wounded but alive, Jun-shik manages to get a bleeding Tatsuo out of the fray, and the two trek over the mountains, hoping to find the border with Germany. With Tatsuo losing consciousness, Jun-shik goes to get help, but instead is taken prisoner…
Two years later, Tatsuo has recovered and is part of a special troupe of former POWs who have been forced to fight for the Nazis. At Normandy, he is stunned to see someone running for exercise along the shore – it is Jun-shik. Jun-shik has grown mostly deaf from his wounds. The long, troubled rivalry with Tatsuo has now emerged into a bond of reliable trust: both men vow to survive the war and return to their homes and run the marathon again. When word comes that the troops are to be shipped to Calais, where the Allies are expected to land, they make plans to escape to a ship that will return them to Asia. But the next morning, the sound of planes overhead indicates the Allies are attacking. Fighting side-by-side while trying to forge a plan of escape, Tatsuo and Jun-shik work together – only to see one of them fall in the final moments of the battle, sacrificing himself for the other.
Four years later, in a London marathon, an Asian runner emerges from the pack in the final mile to win the race….as he crosses the finish line, he remembers the sacrifice of the friend who was once his enemy.
“My Way”
About the Production
International audiences are used to seeing World War II from the side of the Allies: award-winning films such as “Patton” and “Saving Private Ryan” have helped to define the genre by offering compelling battle sequences alongside rich characterization. More recently, in Clint Eastwood’s “Flags of Our Fathers” and “Letters from Iwo Jima,” the war has been considered from multiple perspectives, as a single battle was presented from both the American and Japanese perspective.
Now comes the most expensive film ever produced in Korea, from Kang Je-kyu, one of the nation’s most acclaimed and successful directors. “My Way” tells the story of the war from the most unlikely of perspectives, as a backdrop against the bitter rivalry that evolves into a powerful friendship between a Korean and Japanese soldier. With battle sequences that rival any found in a Hollywood film, an international cast, and a story that covers a decade across two continents, “My Way” is a thrilling and consuming drama that transcends borders and nationality, revealing the horror of war and the power of hope.
Filmmaker Kang Je-kyu was inspired by a documentary he saw in Korea about a photograph that had recently been unearthed by the United States National Archives. Taken shortly after D-Day, the photograph shows a number of Nazi POWs – among them, a small man of clearly Asian descent. He spoke little German and no English, but eventually his story was told to the American authorities. The ultimate pawn in the deadly game of war, the Korean native had been conscripted into the Japanese army, and subsequently taken as a POW by the Soviets, then the Germans.
Realizing the cinematic potential of the man’s story, Kang began assembling a story inspired by this forgotten soldier, in a project that would ultimately take him seven years to realize and become the Korean film industry’s most imaginative and ambitious film to date. "I gave my best effort and passion that I have spared for the past seven years while producing this film,” he explained in an interview.
Kang is known as one of Korea’s most successful directors of action films. His 1999 breakthrough spy thriller “Shiri” became the nation’s box-office champion upon its release, the first film to sell over six million admissions in Korea. Four years later, “Tae Guk Gi: The Brotherhood of War,” an epic about the Korean War, nearly doubled that take, and still ranks as the third-most successful Korean film of all time. But he knew that “My Way” would require more than just an epic vision and exciting action sequences. “The film touches upon sensitive historical issues,” he explains, citing the still-sensitive historical tension concerning the Japanese occupation of Korea. “But it’s not a conventional war story featuring perpetrators and victims. It strives to transmit humanist message, as it is about not giving up on your dreams even through the turmoil of war and even learning to forgive because of that dream.”
With a production budget of 28 billion won (about $23 million), “My Way” is the first Korean film to deal with the subject of World War II. To capture the scope of Jun-shik and Tatsuo’s story, the film needed to recreate battlefronts scattered across the globe, including the Nomonhan Incident of 1939 (along the Mongolian-Chinese border), a Nazi-Soviet clash in 1941, and the Invasion of Normandy (D-Day) in 1944.
As a complement to the ambitious technical scale, the central story of “My Way” is strengthened by relationship between two marathon runners, one Korean and one Japanese, who come to the battlefields as former athletic rivals but over time become each other’s greatest hope for survival. On a 7500 mile journey from occupied Korea to the Soviet Union to Germany to France, the horrors of war and their powerful instinct for survival force the men to set aside their prior bitterness.
Dramatizing the characters’ epic lives and visualizing their experiences was like having to make several different films: the first half-hour of “My Way” details the passionate rivalry that evolves as young Jun-shik and Tatsuo emerge as Olympic hopefuls against the backdrop of the Japanese occupation of Korea. Subsequent sequences see them serving in the Japanese army, a Soviet POW camp, with the Soviet army, and finally with the Nazis at Normandy – each portion of the film featuring enough plot twists and emotional tension to be films in and of themselves. After two years of research, three years of writing the final screenplay and fourteen months of pre-production, the shooting of “My Way” began in October 2010, and wrapped up 156 days later.
For the lead role of Jun-shik, Kang reunited with his star from “Tae Guk Gi,” Korean leading man Jang Dong-gun. The role of Tatsuo was given to Japanese actor Joe Odagiri, who had made films in Korea previously and has fans and box-office appeal in both countries. Adding to the Pan-Asian appeal of the cast is actress Fan Bingbing, one of China’s top television, film, and recording stars (and winner of the Best Actress Award at the 2010 Tokyo International Film Festival), cast in the supporting role of Shirai, the vengeance-fueled sniper who helps Jun-shik avoid death at the hands of a Russian fighter pilot. Rounding out the cast is the scene-stealing Kim In-kwon, cast as Jun-shik’s best friend Jong-dae. Although at first something of comic relief, Jong-dae becomes a symbol for the horror of war when his elevated position at the Russian POW camp turns him into a ruthless tyrant mad with abusive power.
In addition to finding a cast that could carry the emotional weight of the film, Kang and his production crew took painstaking measures to ensure that the look of the film was both realistic in terms of historical accuracy while still taking advantage of the latest cinematic technology. They spent almost two years researching locations that could stand in for parts of Asia, Russia, Eastern and Western Europe. In the end, the production was supported by a staff of over 170 Korean film professionals behind the cameras and over 16,000 extras.
To maximize production costs, Kang’s crew made the decision to reconstruct the Japanese, Soviet, and German army camps on the south coast of Korea at Saemangeum, the world’s largest man-made sea barrier. An area of nearly 250 square miles was divided into three sectors to represent three distinct areas that help make up the film’s diverse backdrops.