DVDfever.co.uk - The Guard Post DVD reviewDVDfever.co.uk - Charts, News and Reviews of Blu-rays, DVDs, Games, CDs, Hardware, Laserdiscs, Cinema Films & more
Sgt Major Noh: Ho-jin Chun
Corporal Kang: Young-hoon Lee
Guard Post Head, First Lt Woo: Hyun-Jae Cho
Senior Sgt: Seung-hoon Lee
At Guard Post 506
when this secret military South Korean border outlet stops reporting in, an army team are sent in to find out what's going
on, led by Sgt Major Noh (Ho-jin Chun).
They find all but one of the 21 guards dead, and the one who's found alive is standing over them, Guard Post Head, First
Lt Woo (Hyun-Jae Cho), holding an axe, covered in blood from head to toe and with an evil grin fixed on his face.
As the investigation begins, that man falls into a coma and the authorities only have eight hours to figure out what
happened before the army start to cover it all up so not a word of it gets out. Once they do get chance to question him,
clearly things don't look good for his chances, especially when the blood-stained words "Kill them all" are posted on one of
the walls underground.
One man, Sgt. Ma, is still unaccounted for, and he's really not quite feeling himself today, and neither is something he's
just munched on...
There are many flashbacks to explain what happened, although these are fairly disparate and not at all joined up so you
lose focus on precisely why all these things would be happening, and that doesn't help to maintain interest - it just makes
it all rather confusing. As for how it plays out, it's very slow and there are some well-weird moments during the film, not
only during the flashbacks but also - for a reason to be revealed - during the current events too. However, the sum is
less than its parts and it's not enough to make it a film that you can heartily recommend although after sitting through it,
things did improve for the final 20 minutes.
The Guard Post, aka GP506 in other territories, features some great make-up as the gory moments kick-in,
but any attempt at horror does come off as being on the laughable side.
I've not listed a full cast for this movie as I couldn't find any more than a couple of cast names anywhere online - well,
there's a lot of names on the IMDB but they're not attributed to any character - and a couple more in the
behind-the-scenes piece.
The anamorphic widescreen print used here is rather soft - a little grainy, even, and I can only presume that the aspect
ratio really is 1.85:1 as that's how this DVD is presented and the picture looks okay, frame-wise, although the IMDB states
2.35:1. The Dolby Digital 5.1 sound really kicks a punch quite often, however.
Extras-wise, the main one is a behind-the-scenes piece, The Briefing Room (31:09, filmed in 4:3 with letterboxed film
clips - as are the other pieces), which mixes in some cast interview snippets with on-set footage during the recording of the film and some stills taken
during production. I guess it's fine for those who want to know more about the film, but while I may check it out in full later,
for the time being I've just spent two hours rolling about in the dark and I'd like some daylight in the meantime.
There's also The Barracks (13:42), taking a look at the set design - which is certainly brilliantly well done to convey
the dark atmosphere of the movie, as does the special effects and make-up which is looked at in Guard Post Head Office (9:55),
which helps to make it look even more deliciously grim. Storyboards (9:56) show key scenes in that format, sometimes
mixed in with the movie footage to show how it all fits in, and then there's a Trailer Gallery which includes two trailers
for this film - the latter of which gives away too much - although I prefer to see the film before the trailers, and
trailers for: Apartment 1303, Dragon Tiger Gate, Chocolate, Fatal Contact, Ghost Game, Flashpoint, Battleground 625 and
An Empress and the Warriors.
There's also a trailer for Monkey Magic (1:45, windowboxed 2.35:1) which is a new version of the classic, rather mad, series
Monkey, which looks like it rather keeps with the style of the original whilst updating the special FX. It's subtitled
but, of course, we'll once again need a ridiculously-bad dubbed version of it like we used to watch on TV all those years ago.
The film is very well-chaptered with 24 of them, the main menu features clips of the movie and a small piece of the background
music all on a loop and the English subtitles kick in by default and can't be turned off, even though my Xbox 360 said 'subtitles
off' when I tried it.
As of April 2009, Blu-rays and DVDs reviewed by the editor are watched on a Panasonic TH-37PX80B
37" Plasma TV with a Sony BDP-1500 Blu-ray player and played through a Yamaha DSP-AX820 amplifier.
PC games reviewed by the editor are on:
Since Jan 2011: Intel Quad Core Dell XPS 8100, i7 CPU 860 @ 2.80Ghz, 8Gb RAM, nVidia GeForce GTS 240, Windows 7
Since Nov 2005: Intel Pentium D 830 3.0Ghz, 1Gb RAM, 128Mb nVidia GeForce 6700XL, Windows XP
Since Aug 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.66Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb GeForce4 MX440 graphics, Windows XP
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Since May 2000: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, Voodoo 3 3000 AGP
