Hope review: An epic cinematic spectacle
There have been a few big-budget monster movies out of Hollywood this year, but none of them has been as epic and awesome as the South Korean sci-fi action thriller Hope.
Na Hong-jin‘s film, which competed at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year, follows police chief Ko Bum-seok (Hwang Jung-min) and officer Im Sung-ae (Hoyeon) as they defend their community of Hope Harbour from a large mysterious creature.
Hope is reportedly the most expensive South Korean movie ever made, and you can see where the money went, especially in the first hour. The massive scale of this film is mind-blowing and the production design of the town, showing the monster’s path of destruction, is jaw-dropping. The first hour absolutely rocks, even though it is basically just the police chief running through town, trying to find the creature and kill it as the monster throws vehicles and people around like nobody’s business (I ducked a couple of times like it was a 3D movie!)
As always, the film loses something when we finally see the monster in all its glory. That’s especially the case with Hope because I didn’t love the creature design and the visual effects are poor (especially when you consider the budget). I had such a good time and so much goodwill towards it that I didn’t care about the monster visuals at first. However, it became harder to ignore as they increased in number, plus seeing famous actors’ faces on the creatures was super distracting and took me out of the story (why did Alicia Vikander, Michael Fassbender and Taylor Russell say yes to this?)
Even though I enjoyed it, the movie didn’t need to be 2 hours 40 minutes. It could have easily been two hours if some repetitive or overlong scenes were cut. It doesn’t feel quite that long, but it does drag a bit in the final act, and the hefty runtime is pretty egregious knowing this isn’t a complete story. I won’t spoil anything, but just stopping and leaving us hanging is not cool. There are better ways to set up a sequel (which I assume is coming).
Look, the writing and acting aren’t the best. I didn’t care for the parallel story of the hunters in the woods as much as the cops’ story, and the visual effects on the monsters are cheap, but I had such a good time with this wildly ambitious movie that I didn’t mind. It delivers in other ways – the action setpieces are awesome and exhilarating, and it’s surprisingly funny, really funny. Some moments are pure comedy!
Many people will probably be put off by the subtitles and the chunky runtime, but Hope is as good as – if not better than – your average Hollywood monster movie. This is an ambitious spectacle and a fun cinema experience.
In cinemas from Friday 25th September