Movie Review: ‘Hope’

This post was originally published on here

DES MOINES, Iowa —

When it comes to our access to international cinema, especially Asian output, we live in a wonderful time. When I first discovered director John Woo, it sent me down the fandom rabbit hole of films, especially action and horror, from Asian countries that still exists in me today.

Of course, I had seen plenty of what, back then, we so graciously called “Chop Socky” movies, those masterpieces of early Martial Arts cinema that played on weekend afternoon TV, with their poor dubbing being almost half the entertainment to my young brain. Yet, it wasn’t until I experienced Woo and his contemporaries that I truly understood how talented the filmmakers of that region were. It was even enough to get me to go back and reevaluate those older Kung Fu films.

Through the 1990s and a good portion of the 2000s, I had to hunt—and hunt hard—for the films I read about, either in the several books on Asian cinema I had bought or in my film magazines. I would scour the Foreign section of video stores or Borders or Best Buy like I was the Indiana Jones of the Video Age, hoping to score something that I’d heard existed but wasn’t sure I’d ever find.

Not only has the internet put a lot of these films right at our fingertips, but many more of them are getting wide theatrical releases. Earlier this year we got the amazing martial arts spectacular The Furious from Hong Kong, and in less than a month we’ve been treated to two South Korean monster movies between Colony and this week’s release, Hope.

In the small community of Hope Harbor, which lies near the border of the DMZ between the North and South, police chief Ko Bum-seok (Hwang Jung-min) has been called out to investigate a strangely mutilated bull. It was found in the middle of the road by Ko Sung-ki (Zo In-sung) and his hunting buddies, and they claim it wasn’t there when they passed through earlier that morning.

When the consensus is reached that it might be a tiger attack, Bum-seok heads back to put out the warning about the potential of a loose wild animal. Upon arriving in town, he finds sections destroyed by something very big. He soon finds the culprit: A gigantic alien monster.

Eventually, while the monster chases him all over the town, rookie officer Im Sung-ae (Hoyeon) arrives in a squad car with a backseat full of weaponry. They’re on their own, though, since any reinforcements are too busy battling a wildfire.

Meanwhile, Sung-ki and his hunting party are searching the woods. They come across a couple scenes of destruction but continue on, unaware of exactly what they’re after, or how extremely dangerous these creatures are.

Written and directed by Na Hong-jin (The Wailing),Hope is an utterly bonkers alien invasion film. At times, it’s pretty spooky and quite gory, yet most of its scenes are presented with tongue planted firmly in cheek.

Hope Harbor is a small town, isolated not only by its location near the DMZ (with minefields and razor wire fences a part of their daily lives), but also by their collective lack of knowledge of, and experience with, the world outside their community’s borders. One running joke is that if you heard it from a particular old man, Mr. Hae-sul (Im Hyun-sik), then it’s just accepted to be true.

Hong-jin allows the reality of how such bumpkins would handle this situation to shine through. These people would be considered incompetent in a normal emergency situation, and this is amplified by the scale of this particular circumstance. That gives Hope an almost slapstick quality that works so well, both in contradiction to and in conjunction with the on screen antics and action, which also helps keep things entertaining for the entirety of its hefty 156 minute runtime.

There is one major flaw with this film and, since Hopeis apparently the most expensive Korean film ever produced, it’s a doozy. While the designs of the aliens do look pretty cool, there are many times where the visual effects for them have a janky look.

When I say janky, I mean slightly better than SyFy channel movie effects. Weirdly, it’s not all the time, mostly just during the action scenes, but it’s quite noticeable. Luckly, as a whole, Hope is so entertaining that you can let this slide and simply sit back and enjoy the ride. And what a ride it is.

Now, despite its long runtime, Hope does leave you with some unanswered questions and a couple cliffhangers, but don’t worry because a sequel is supposedly on its way.