Waikiki Brothers
| Waikiki Brothers | |
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Waikiki Brothers film poster
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| Hangul | |
| Revised Romanization | Waikiki beuradeoseu |
| McCune–Reischauer | Waik‘ik‘i pŭratŏsŭ |
| Directed by | Yim Soon-rye |
| Produced by |
Lee Eun Shin Jae-myung |
| Written by | Yim Soon-rye |
| Starring | Lee Eol Park Won-sang Hwang Jung-min |
| Music by | Choi Sun-sik |
| Cinematography | Choi Gi-yeol |
| Edited by | Kim Sang-bum |
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Release date
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Running time
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109 minutes |
| Country | South Korea |
| Language | Korean |
Waikiki Brothers is a 2001 South Korean film, set in the 1980s, about a group of high school friends who form a band. It was the opening film of the 2001 Jeonju International Film Festival.
Waikiki Brothers is a band going nowhere. After another depressing gig, the saxophonist quits, leaving the three remaining members - lead singer and guitarist Sung-woo (Lee Eol), keyboardist Jung-seok (Park Won-sang), and drummer Kang-soo (Hwang Jung-min), to continue on the road. The band ends up at Sung-woo's hometown, Suanbo, which was a popular hot spring resort in the '80s. The main resort now is the Waikiki Hotel, and their gig at the hotel nightclub starts well, until Jung-seok and Kang-soo start to play out their worst vices. For Sung-woo, the calm center of the band, the return home is filled with reservations of disappointments and a lost love. He reunites with his old high school friends, the original Waikiki Brothers, and finds them far from happy. He runs into In-hee (Oh Ji-hye), his unrequited first love. Now widowed, she seems desperate to try their relationship again. Sung-woo also runs into his old music teacher, Byung-joo, and tries to help him get work. But the band is fired from the nightclub and Sung-woo is forced to perform in karaoke bars. And, then, tragedy strikes when his high school classmate Soo-chul dies in an accident.
Cine21 film critic Shim Young-seop said, "You can see how much (director) Im feels attached to the world. Though the characters are deceived by reality, they cannot hate the world; they still love it. Small-budgeted but artistic films such as Waikiki Brothers, films that depict modern ordinary Koreans as they truly are, those are the best movies and the most authentically Korean."
In 2004, it inspired a musical titled Go! Waikiki Brothers starring North Korean defector Kim Young-un, which also performed in Los Angeles in 2006.
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