“Hope,” the new science fiction epic from Na Hong-jin, has one of the best first hours I’ve seen of a film this year. So good, in fact, that the bad visual effects – and they are as bad as you’ve heard – didn’t bother me a wink.
“Hope” begins with a discovery. A group of hunters, led by Sung-ki (Zo In-sung), find a dead cow in the middle of the road. This cow isn’t just dead, though – it’s destroyed, ripped through like it was made of silk instead of thick, strong hide. Not knowing what to make of the carnage, they call in the police chief, Bum-seok (Hwang Jung-min), who takes news of a great big roaming beast – a bear, or a tiger, maybe – back to Hope Harbor, a small village somewhere near the Korea Demilitarized Zone.
But the roaming beast is not a bear, or even a tiger – it’s something far more unfamiliar, and far more terrifying. And as that first hour unfolds, Bum-seok’s journey through his small-town-turned-warzone is utterly enthralling, as propulsive and unique as anything you’ll see all year – even when the monster shows up, looking like bad CGI from a bad video game.
“Hope” is reportedly the most expensive movie South Korea has ever produced (reports differ, but many estimates put the film at around $74 million). And putting the bad CGI of it all aside, “Hope” is better when it’s leaning smaller, and only sometimes can live up to its epic aspirations. After the film’s opening, it continues to take epic swings. But as the world gets bigger, everything feels just a little more unwieldy. And when “Hope” gets shaky, it only calls attention to its other failings.
Part of what makes the first hour of “Hope” great is the tension between our little man on the ground and the clearly massive implications of what this monster is and where it came from. That tension creates some wonderful character moments, and the script (written by Na) deftly weaves together a portrait of who each character is, particularly Bum-seok.
When we meet Bum-seok, it’s immediately clear how he relates to Sung-ki (his second cousin) and the rest of the far more rural hunters. They’ve clearly known each other for some time, and it seems Bum-seok’s police chief position has given him a little bit of a complex – not enough to make him a total jerk, but enough to make messing with him all the more enjoyable for this particular group. They convince Bum-seok that a tiger could have made this mess, even though they know fully well that’s likely impossible. When Bum-seok hands one of the men his sunglasses so he can get a better look at the cow, the man nonchalantly puts them on his own face. They’re all lightly negging him – but it’s all in good fun.
As Bum-seok heads back to Hope Harbor, the world building continues to impress, Na adhering to the old standard of “show, don’t tell.” As Bum-seok drives through town, the streets are already empty, accounting for the fact that the monster is already on the attack – this movie has already begun for the townspeople and Bum-seok has to catch up. The colorful, haphazardly built homes against flashes of total destruction – blood smears, crushed bodies, crunched metal – ups the sense of dread, and that horror puts Bum-seok’s small-town police chops to the test. In one of the best shots in the film, the monster (who remains unseen for much of the opening act) throws a car against a man, flattening him into a pancake. As the dust clears, we see Bum-seok from afar, a lone man in the street clutching at his gun against a backdrop of quaint, quiet buildings. He is obviously scared, but he takes a breath and charges forward. He might be ill-equipped, and he might be a little silly. But we know he’s not a coward.
There’s plenty else to recommend “Hope” throughout this section of the film, from its dark humor (somehow, someway, Na made a moment that centers around a cop accidentally shooting an innocent person a gag), and the introduction of Bum-seok’s deputy, Officer Yim (Jung Ho-yeon) is as perfect of an action introduction as I’ve ever seen. All of this works so well, that when we finally see the CGI monster – which turns out to be an alien from another planet – it’s kind of easy to ignore how silly it looks. But it becomes less easy as the film goes on.
It’s hard to speculate on what went wrong with the CGI – time constraints, or running out of money, or some combination of the two, maybe. But the look of the monster (and later, the other aliens who join the monster) is exacerbated by sweeping cinematography and rather stunning practical work in other areas, such as the stunts. And the tension between those two things only gets worse as the second half of the movie starts to open up the world.
The vastness of the world – the idea that while we might be the main character in our own story, we are merely supporting players in others – is something that Na appears particularly interested in. In his previous film “The Wailing,” he leaves the audience so unsure of so many things, the motivations of multiple characters opaque to the point of confusion, right up until the very end. That approach works for “The Wailing,” leading to a deep sense of distrust and terror. “Hope” is a little different, but has a similarly fractured approach – every time Bum-seok runs into somebody new, you get the sense that these characters are in their own movie.
It’s a fun quality for a film to have, but as the world expands, it becomes harder to manage. When the aliens show up, it’s clear they also have something else going on – some intergalactic battle nonsense that the movie does not care to explain. But, with the mystery and the kineticism of that first hour gone, the film’s second half and some change is mostly comprised of a lot of cutting back and forth between different human versus alien fights, all of which feel pretty similar to each other and use a hefty amount of slow motion – which only serves to call even more attention to the shoddy visual effects work. But beyond that, as we jump from battle to battle, it simply feels like Na ran out of ideas and steam.
And yet, despite all this, it’s hard for me to be mad at something like “Hope” – bombastic, original, with Na trying things I don’t really see other directors trying. It’s not perfect, not even close – but it’s an effort worth appreciating.
