This review may contain spoilers
Good Sci Fi flick with heart. Would have been great if it had ended a little earlier.
This Sci Fi flick has awesome production values - the CGI and action scenes are top notch. There's a very simple story. The space sweepers are the "poor" from earth that make their living scavenging waste left behind by the rich and powerful, who have all escaped into space since we didn't take care of earth and it's now dying slowly. The protagonist's daughter died in an accident and he's doing everything he can to get enough money so the official channels can find and retrieve her body before decaying orbit causes it to burn up on re-entry. Then, one salvage mission discover "Dorothy" a robot captured by terrorists that contains a bomb.
The reaction of crew of his vessel, The Victory, is mixed, but the acting is top notch. The captain is suitably bad-ass, the former gangster with tattoos and dread locks is EVEN more bad ass, and the funniest and baddest ass of them all would have to be ... the robot. Yes. The former military assassin robot who is SUCH a capitalist he/she cheats his/her crewmates at cards, so that he/she can get skin grafts. He/she is awesome! They should make a whole movie based on the adventures of this wise cracking robot. The little girl is cute and supporting characters do well, including the villain.
The story is quite predictable in parts, but the father-daughter and family bond are both effective and heart warming enough to tug on one's heart strings. Who isn't going to melt at a cute kid drawing pictures of you? *arrow slams into heart* aaak you got me, you got me good.
If this movie had ended with the crew sacrificing themselves with the bomb, it would have been a 9, maybe even 9.5. Heroic tragic endings, THAT is the Korean Way. But somehow, they introduced a Deus Ex Machina, which made me immediately feel cheated. It turned it into more of an "American" movie, to let the crew live, and each member then has a happy ending. Still okay, but no longer great. I don't know, maybe I'm jaded, but it seems to me the sad ending would have been a better place to end and the movie would have been more of a "Korean" movie.
The reaction of crew of his vessel, The Victory, is mixed, but the acting is top notch. The captain is suitably bad-ass, the former gangster with tattoos and dread locks is EVEN more bad ass, and the funniest and baddest ass of them all would have to be ... the robot. Yes. The former military assassin robot who is SUCH a capitalist he/she cheats his/her crewmates at cards, so that he/she can get skin grafts. He/she is awesome! They should make a whole movie based on the adventures of this wise cracking robot. The little girl is cute and supporting characters do well, including the villain.
The story is quite predictable in parts, but the father-daughter and family bond are both effective and heart warming enough to tug on one's heart strings. Who isn't going to melt at a cute kid drawing pictures of you? *arrow slams into heart* aaak you got me, you got me good.
If this movie had ended with the crew sacrificing themselves with the bomb, it would have been a 9, maybe even 9.5. Heroic tragic endings, THAT is the Korean Way. But somehow, they introduced a Deus Ex Machina, which made me immediately feel cheated. It turned it into more of an "American" movie, to let the crew live, and each member then has a happy ending. Still okay, but no longer great. I don't know, maybe I'm jaded, but it seems to me the sad ending would have been a better place to end and the movie would have been more of a "Korean" movie.
Was this review helpful to you?