![]() Meanwhile, Jin Sun-kyu ( The Good, The Bad and the Weird) gets to have fun mugging as former gang leader Tiger Park, who simply finds the blue-collar work humiliating and wants to buy his way out. There’s a little less to learn about the cool and arrogant Captain Jang, Kim Tae-ri of The Handmaiden fame, whose desire for revenge is kept vague until late in the film. Effectively, he’s being charged for closure. To former government operative Tae-ho (Song Joong-ki, a frequent collaborator with director Jo), it’s paying the authorities to find and identify the missing body of a family member he lost long ago in an accident. Though it’s predictable, it’s still delightful to see this cast of hardened stock types soften to Dorothy’s presence, unable to mask their glee at being included in her drawings, or referred to as “Uncle.”Īt first, the crew simply focuses on accumulating enough money to buy their way to fulfillment, whatever that means to each member. But they of course warm to her, and take the film down a reasonably predictable but genuinely moving found-family arc. The crew initially sees Dorothy as a golden goose, and they quickly look to ransom her to the highest bidder to buy themselves out of poverty. Their precarious but straightforward existence is interrupted by their accidental discovery of a young child named Dorothy, who turns out to be an android supposedly containing a nuclear weapon. (“Between repairs and fines, we just pay debt with more debt,” one of the crew complains early on.) The sweepers are perpetually broke, as destitution looms far more ominously than the cold vacuum of space. Jo’s film is concerned with the people who can’t afford the benefits of the new world, including Victory’s eponymous “space sweepers.” The protagonists make their living as a crew of freelance interplanetary rag-and-bone men who gather the scraps the wealthy utopians leave behind. ![]() Everyone who can afford it has moved off the ruined planet to live in orbit on a seemingly utopian colony named Eden, built and ruled by a megacorporation. The year is 2092, and Earth is borderline uninhabitable, overrun by arid deserts and the dry orange color grading of Blade Runner 2049. That’s where Space Sweeper’s interests lie: with the scrabbling, needy people who would fall between the cracks in its hypothetical brave new world. During the launch of the spaceship Victory, Jo turns the camera downward to the pilot’s feet to note his completely worn-out socks, immediately undoing any possible glamour from the idea of space travel. Heralded as the first blockbuster Korean space opera, Jo Sung-hee’s Space Sweepers quickly moves to undercut any grandeur that might come from that statement.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |