Broken Promises & Dreams

Aimless Bullet directed by Hyun Mok Yu. It is a film that demonstrates how soldiers survive or try to survive after the war. In the first part we encounter the effects of how post-traumatic stress. The men go out for a drink at a local bar, they have too much to drink and Young Ho punches the window, breaks it and his hand. Promises and dreams are broken after the men have come back from fighting in the war, they have been changed by the violence and pain that they have encountered. For example Myong Sook awaited her Kyong Sik to marry her after the war but no because he is crippled and different he believes that he doesn’t deserve to live happily with her. Kyoung Sik says “With this half body alive I don’t deserve to have a happy life”. So he asks her to wait a little longer. Myung Sook realises that the dreams they made together before the war are now shattered to pieces. His choices leaves Myung Sook having to forfeit her easy life and become a prostitute to American soldiers.

Young Ho who is in love with Sul-Hee, has difficulty being with her. He drinks to numb the pain of the war. He always comes home drunk and has difficulty keeping his promises to his niece. He claims that he has “Nothing else to do”. Forced to go fight and then coming home with no life left in them.

The war veterans and the characters around them are both affected by the results of the war either directly or indirectly. “Did God send me out like an aimless bullet with no place to go?”, this is one of the last lines of the film. To explain that the pain that the men had to endure was so extensive that they cannot find the right path to follow like a bullet without aim?