Hope is as much an epic sci-fi thriller as it is a maximalist, high-concept action film. It may be repetitive, and it may oversell itself, but there are enough exhilarating, original thrills here to justify its indulgent and frankly insane sensibilities. When a village police chief is forced to defend his local community against a violent and mysterious creature, so begins an ever-escalating tale that reminds you why genre filmmaking in South Korea is in both careful and crazed hands.
Written, directed, and co-produced by Na Hong-jin, South Korea’s most expensive blockbuster lives up to that very investment—gargantuanly long action scenes, sweeping camera movements, and an increasingly bombastic and overly dramatic central conceit. It does have a story, but it wouldn’t be hyperbole to say this is practically a multi-hour chase film that finally decides to tack on some lore in the final act.
Ko Bum-seok (Hwang Jung-min) is the police chief of Hope Harbor, a small village bordering the Korean Demilitarised Zone. Warning signs and propaganda about North Korean influence loom everywhere. In a town populated mostly by the elderly, Chief Bum-seok is perplexed when he is called in by his second cousin, Ko Sung-ki (Zo In-sung), to investigate a mutilated cow with unnatural wounds. The opening sequence establishes a film that isn’t taking itself too seriously either: the locals immediately begin to theorise that a tiger, which no longer exists in Korea, is the culprit.
Chasing, screeching, crashing, banging, lingering, shattering, biting—those are just a few adjectives to describe the soundscape and visual palette during the first set piece of Hope. This set piece clocks in at nearly an entire hour, and its intensity relies on the film’s restraint. Bum-seok comes back to a village full of destroyed streets, wildfires, and cars flying across the sky. Despite the amazingly detailed desolation, there isn’t a monster in sight. The beauty of the film’s first hour is not knowing what is causing this carnage, nor what it looks like. Avoiding the trailer for this film would do you a world of good.
As Sung-ki and his friend group of local hunters go searching in the forest, Chief Bum-seok is eventually joined by Ahn Nak-yeon (Lee Sang-hee), a retired colonel, and later, Im Sung-ae (Jung Ho-yeon), the peppy rookie who has taken nearly all of the police force’s artillery. As the group of hunters soon becomes the hunted, Hope takes some surprising turns toward science fiction—a story that has both the scale of a kaiju film and the tone of a slapstick comedy. A sequence where Sung-ae interviews an injured local who had to hold in his stool will have you shrieking in embarrassment just as much as howling in laughter.Â
The CGI in many places is undeniably garish, but if audiences are willing to just ride this bloody, big, and bonkers wave, it won’t be hard to get used to. The cinematography more than makes up for it: the action is framed by dazzling tracking shots that feel breathtakingly stable. Gliding camera movements, dynamic wide shots, and impressively long takes—the visual language is a technical feast. A car chase towards the end becomes so gloriously ludicrous that it should remind Hollywood to stop framing action in such milquetoast ways.
Save for a chunk in the middle, where things considerably slow down, this is a gonzo, crazy, and completely heightened, caps-lock-level action bonanza. Given the amount of chase scenes on display here, the pace will waver for some—it is a dizzying amount of sprinting, crawling, and galloping. Still, the sheer ambition, relentless insanity, impeccable production design, and commitment to 157 minutes of balls-to-the-walls mayhem consistently earn Hope back its goodwill, even as your suspension of disbelief is stretched to utterly bewildering extremes.
It does covertly become Part 1 in the film’s deranged climax—a pivot James Cameron would probably be exceptionally proud of once the audience meet the A-listers teased on the poster. Hong-jin already has a finished script for the second outing, something that hopefully gets funding given this part centres almost entirely on setup. A bit of The Host, a lot of Transformers, and a sprinkle of other, more spoiler-ridden genre fare, and you have yourself a film you will either get on your horse and ride with or immediately get bucked off.
Hope is excessive in almost every conceivable way, but that is entirely why it works. As with its narrative, it never knows where to stop, but beneath all the pandemonium is a pointed exploration of fear, perspective, and who the real monsters are. It is entertaining, violent, funny, and borderline nonsensical, but there is something completely unrestrained about the film that is worthy of respect. With kinetic camera work, a hefty runtime, and shonky VFX, Hope is a grand genre exercise that ultimately asks the viewer to decide who the real monster is.
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