The young astronaut, Seon-woo, is played winningly by K-Pop star Do Kyung-soo, aka D.O. Although amusingly, and presumably to render him recognizable to his adoring fans, his makeup looks several shades paler than everyone else, as if he has just escaped from a music video. Also, he looks a little young for the mission, playing a Navy Seal whose inclusion seems off, although this may just be a nod to D.O.’s recent completion of national service. But he acts well, floating around in space and batting away zero-gravity jetsam with a nice, pissed-off weariness. His interactions with Sol Kyung-gu carry real emotion, with the suggestion that Jae-guk’s role in the disaster that claimed Gyu-Tae’s life has more to it than appearances initially suggest.
However, the film struggles more when it sketches the politicking between KASC and NASA. We are told that NASA and the European Space Agency will refuse all help as punishment for Korea’s prior, disastrous unilateral move outside their consortium. But the notion they wouldn’t respond to an S.O.S. felt deeply unlikely. This is rendered even less believable by the scenes featuring Jae-guk’s ex-wife, Moon Young (Kim He-ae.) Now at NASA, her career hangs by a thread as she assists Jae-Guk covertly. The various Western Extras who were dragged in to furnish NASA sound badly dubbed and look like heavies in a down-market martial arts flick. I didn’t buy a minute of them.
“…balances personal stakes with some pretty great extra terrestrial action. The sequences in space are handled beautifully.”
This extends to the KASC flight center, too. At first, Jae-Guk, still wearing his parka from the boar hunt he was snatched from to help, contrasts well with the giant, screen-soaked cave. But the film is just over two hours long, and the setting felt gratingly overfamiliar.
But Yong-hwa is a game director who presents his drama with a real flourish. The script is knotty and intriguing, putting D.O. through a punishing gauntlet to the extent that his adventures had me pretty convinced throughout that he was toast in a weepy. Yong-Hwa Kim mounts the drama in his script with real verve and gorgeous imagery from cinematographer Young-Ho Kim. The musical score by Jae-Hak Lee is stellar, elevating the film consistently with real range. Martial drums propel the action perfectly one minute, then give way to elegant strings and piano the next. It’s not quite Zimmer’s awesome Interstellar soundtrack, but it is a superb counterpoint to the action.
It’s such a good film on so many levels, and it feels stuffed to the gills with love and care from the creative team behind it that it is especially frustrating that it felt overlong. I would have welcomed a substantial rethink of the Earth-bound segments, such as Jae-Guk simply hacking in from a more quotidian setting without the distraction of dozens of walky-talky West Wing-style professionals in every shot. Perhaps they could have rendered the flight center blacked out and mostly inoperable due to the solar storm, a cyber attack, or anything really. But the film insists on going toe to toe with long stretches of Apollo 13 and loses quite a few teeth to Ed Harris as a result, which is not to take away from Sol Kyung-gu’s performance. He nails his role as a man ousted from a world that was his life, struggling to re-acclimatize to it, with all its terrible memories.
This is a nicely realized slice of science fiction and a terrific piece of world cinema.
"…insists on going toe to toe with long stretches of Apollo 13 and loses quite a few teeth to Ed Harris as a result..."
