In terms of opening salvos, Hope is in a league of its own.
Like a runaway train racing down a mountain and bursting into flames as the track breaks apart, South Korean director Na Hong-jin’s latest film makes a grand gangbusters impression, its first hour a feat of cinematic showmanship that will have audiences holding their breath and clinging to their seats. Mired in mystery and steeped in terror, it’s about as good as movie beginnings get.
And best of all, the utter mayhem that follows also rocks.
Arriving on American shores after its celebrated debut at the Cannes Film Festival, Hope (in theaters Sept. 9) is a rollercoaster of gargantuan, breakneck proportions that finds the celebrated filmmaker—helming his first feature since 2016’s acclaimed horror-mystery The Wailing—operating in gleeful blockbuster form.
A science-fiction epic that for most of its 160-minute runtime is nothing but frenetic chases and chaotic shootouts and sieges, it’s an import of larger-than-life imagination and artistry that rarely lets its foot off the gas and, until its final moments, prioritizes unrelenting action over franchise-establishing world-building.
In the remote coastal village of Hope Harbor, police chief Bum-seok (Hwang Jung-min) is guided by local hunter Sung-ki (Zo In-sung), his second cousin, to a bizarre discovery: a dead bull in the middle of the road, its carcass slashed with gigantic claw marks. Sung-ki and his buddies jokingly convince Bum-seok that the culprit is a tiger that’s migrated from Siberia via North Korea to their tiny enclave. Nonetheless, that prank doesn’t last long.
Tracing the bull’s path, Sung-ki and his cohorts locate a barn torn to shreds (complete with a human arm dangling from a tree) and a trail leading into the forest. Bum-seok, meanwhile, heads to town, where he comes upon a real estate office that now boasts a hole running from its front to its rear—a clear sign that something tore its way through the establishment.
Bum-seok is immediately panicked, and justifiably so, as things quickly go to hell in a handbasket. Without reinforcements due to a nearby wildfire, the cop slowly navigates the decimated neighborhood alone, and Na shrewdly conceals the cause of the wreckage for 50 taut minutes. Bewildered and panicked, especially once bicycles and cars start flying through the air—often striking civilians, some of them armed—Bum-seok is a man unmoored and in grave danger.
Hwang’s frantic and petrified performance is at once commanding and a source of nervous comedy, even once he picks up a bow-and-arrow-toting partner who’s seen the fiend and describes him as a hunched “mush of peas and beans.”
Hope’s escalating insanity is amplified by cross-cutting between Bum-seok, Sung-ki, and, at a certain juncture, Sung-ae (Hoyeon), an officer whose fearsomeness is both invigorating and hilarious. After a prolonged hunt for the goliath wreaking havoc on his home, Bum-seok tracks it down, and the reveal of its identity—or, at least, its physical form—is thankfully as compelling and intriguing as the preceding buildup.
It’s too bad that Na’s CGI is shaky; despite channeling old-school stop-motion style, there’s a recurring visual disconnect between his monster and its real-world environment. Still, his creature design is unique and intimidating, and that remains true as his protagonists run into more trouble.
Hope generates suspense from the fear of the unseen and, afterward, from threats of unthinkable proportions, and it remains gripping even once its beastly marauder and its wild companions seize the spotlight. The film’s dynamism is unflagging, and that’s crucial since the proceedings offer little meaningful depth.
The most generous readings of Na’s latest are that it’s an allegory for anxieties about North Korean invasion (a market banner tellingly reads “Protect the Nation from Infiltration”) or a cautionary tale about the unholy ramifications of thoughtless violence. Yet there isn’t much lurking beneath the surface of this roaring, rampaging venture, so it’s fortunate that the director maintains a fever-pitch tone for nearly its entirety.
Playing like two extended showstoppers sandwiching a brief connective-tissue middle passage—in which a scientist tries, with little luck, to pinpoint the nature of the destructive giant—Hope is giddily gung-ho. Impressively, its leads manage to interject engaging personality into characters whose main job is to run, scream, rage, freak out, and then run some more.
Hwang is particularly charming as the frazzled Bum-seok, who may be in over his head (in this scenario, who isn’t?) but boasts the sort of dutiful bravery typical of heroes. Hoyeon and Zo are similarly up to the challenge of standing out amidst non-stop anarchy, and Na populates the rest of his cast with memorable faces that add color to material that’s often drenched in sticky, slimy goo.
In its latter third, Hope’s staging is tarnished by a bit of spatial sloppiness; given how fast its behemoths move, it takes them an absurdly long time to cross short distances. Such minor issues, however, are overshadowed by a barrage of concussive combat that Na orchestrates at 100mph and with jarring viciousness.
There are several moments in this electric affair that elicit astonished laughs, and the film peaks with a lengthy battle involving horses, grenades, and a straddling-two-modes-of-transportation gag straight out of Footloose, which is as strong as anything that preceded it.
In its closing scenes, Hope eschews finality for an open-ended cliffhanger predicated on a barely explained mythology concerning its extraordinary baddies. There’s a distinctly Avatar-ish quality to its titans, and the fact that their story is teased as the focus of an inevitable sequel takes a bit of wind out of the film’s sails. As with so many like-minded nail-biting endeavors, the less that’s explained, the better, and concluding things on a promise of future exposition isn’t exactly ideal.
Still, considering that the majority of Hope is an adrenalized wonder, there’s reason to believe that Na knows what he’s doing and is merely setting the table for an even crazier feast of out-of-this-world delights, one that ups the sound-and-fury ante while fleshing out the nuts and bolts of his original genre saga.
Even on its own merits, though, the director’s crowd-pleasing carnival of chaos and madness is a winner that, when it comes to the future of blockbuster cinema, gives one, ahem, hope.
