The fun thing about Hope is that it’s a really cool alien-invasion flick. It’s new, fresh and fun, however, there is a price to pay for this Korean epic, that being a 2 hour and 40 minute runtime. This is no Avengers Endgame or the Odyssey but still, something quite good despite director Na Hong Jin’s desire to drag this film well beyond a traditional runtime in what he hopes is the start to a science-fiction franchise.
We start in Korea, with the discovery of a dead cow, with unusual post-mortal wounds, laying in the middle of a rural road in the town of Cape Hope. There we meet our lead characters, Police Chief Beom-seok (Hwang Jung-min), his cousin Zo In-sung (Sung Ki), and his hunting sidekicks.
The dialogue is fun and laughable at times, and at others over-baked and redundant, which is why it took about 30 minutes from this point to realize there was an actual threat and another 30 minutes on top of that before ever seeing one of these space monsters.
It’s all about anticipation and buildup for Director Jin as Chief Seok returns from the mountains to find his city in shambles and quickly worsening, as he follows the loony-tune sized holes through the houses and towards the mass of screams and destruction. Odes to Godzilla films of the past come to mind as we find one place in worse shape then the next, as Chief Seok bravely gets closer and closer to his potential death, all the meanwhile while his cousin is getting closer to the same thing up in the mountains.
Eventually the spectacles of these giant, god-like aliens either destroying a city or fighting through the countryside do come into play and are quite impressive in the process, as were the different design of aliens, who as it turns out may be more misunderstood than aggressor.
There are some inconstancies that don’t match throughout the script but for the most part what you pay for is what you get and that happens to be a pretty fun ride through the Korean Sci-fi genre, in a solid turn from director Na Hong-Jin.
