(3.5 stars)
“Hope” is easily the strangest blockbuster movie I’ve seen in a long time.
Director Na Hong-jin’s first movie in a decade, reportedly the most expensive South Korean film ever, is a nearly three-hour monster epic that combines horror, science fiction and slapstick comedy. It contains both the soaring camera work and spectacle of a Steven Spielberg movie and madcap, practically shot chase sequences that evoke “Max Max: Fury Road,” but trade in the battle trucks for horses and a dinky little police car.
It is thrilling, ridiculous, surprisingly funny and sometimes cheap-looking. I left disappointed. Then I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
“Hope” begins in the eponymous remote village near the demilitarized zone where outpost police chief Bum-seok (Hwang Jung-min) receives reports that a fearsome creature is lurking nearby. He witnesses a terrified man die running from an unknown threat that hurls a truck at him. What threw it? Director Na understands the question is scarier than the answer, and he withholds it for a remarkably long time.
The chief and his plucky deputy Officer Yim (Hoyeon of “Squid Game” fame) fight mightily against the creature in town. Bum-seok’s cousin Sung-ki (Zo In-sung) and other villagers head into the forest looking for more clues of the monster.
There is no character development. Nobody has an arc. The only understanding these characters achieve is the unearthing of more lore about the creature and why it’s attacking the town in broad daylight. Unlike most rural disaster movies, “Hope” preserves the bright pastel colors of small South Korean villages, giving this film a sweet candy-like texture.
The film also has a constant running joke: Everyone is incompetent in handling the situation. “Hope” is filled with scrappy warriors (the militia of elderly farmers on the back of a truck is a highlight) but no one emulates the highly skilled or possibly just lucky heroes of the blockbusters it otherwise resembles.
Hoyeon is particularly good at finding the comedy in that contradiction. She arrives late to the fight, comedically armed to the teeth with assault rifles and grenade launchers as she zips and drifts through the tiny village streets in a little police car that could.
In another scene, Hoyeon’s deputy learns new, important information about the creature delivered to her by a fisherman with bowel problems. Watching Hoyeon’s face contort as she tries to process the disgusting details of his story and the enormity of its implications feels funny and grounded. The little said about the nature of this story, the better. It’s best if you experience confusion with her.
We eventually see the monster, and it’s not impressive and the film’s weakest point. Despite the budget, its computer graphics pale in comparison to Hollywood’s best and don’t quite support the scale of Na’s imagination. The creature is wonderfully animated, whipping its body around with a ferocity that communicates danger, but it rarely looks convincing. There comes a point where you have to accept the artificiality of it.
Cinematographer Hong Kyung-pyo repeatedly pulls the camera back to emphasize that these tiny, confused people are surrounded by an enormous landscape (shot in the sweeping seaside of Haenam County in South Korea and forests in Romania). It’s a blockbuster with a refreshing visual sweep as horses thunder through forests and cars careen across mountain roads as assault rifle fire crackles through the air.
“Hope” feels like the odd and quirky sibling to Spielberg’s recent “Disclosure Day,” another movie where watching camera movements is half the fun. But it’s hard to tell whether Na is making an homage or a subversion.
Na punctures that grandeur constantly with blood, human stupidity and vulgar language. The script will teach you almost every profanity in the Korean language. Every time the movie lurches toward an emotion that feels stable, something happens that jolts you out of that vibe.
That can make “Hope” frustrating, but it also makes it more interesting than anything you’ll see this year. There are cleaner, more satisfying movies than “Hope,” but few more fun and surprising.
R. Strong bloody, violent content and language.
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