Jung_E

First off, I knew nothing about this film, and I didn't know that the female lead had died in real life. It came up on my Netflix queue, the premise looked interesting, so I watched. And I am glad I did.

People bashing this movie have obviously been raised on a steady diet of big-budget action movies where there are explosions every few seconds. If not, they lose interest. This movie, while it has its action, is more a character study and a dive into the morality of cyber-human symbiosis.

I found the acting top notch. Even the quirky out of place odd behaviors are there for a purpose...to demonstrate how machines and organics react differently to external stimuli. By the end I found myself thinking..."What if"...this was to happen? And that's the mark of a compelling and thoughtful movie.

8.5 stars.

Soon to be cult classic South Korean Sci-Fi where once again corporate thuggery is at work, taking advantage of the earth's depleting and chaotic system. This time dealing with Combat AIs injected with a high level brain function from a deceased woman soldier, who happens to be a mother to one of the chief scientists working on the project (only in Korean movies)! This connection creates the emotional bond between robot and human, giving this movie a surprising depth that has you cheering them all the way.

The action scenes are a gamers joy, and handled well without being too convoluted, like most movies where one never knows what the heck is going on. Production value is high, and the pristine quality cinematography a bonus.

This little gem of a soon to be cult classic is a grand send-off to Kang Soo-youn, with her top-notch subdued performance as the chief scientist, Soehyun.

So gather your nerdy friends, find a big screen, and give it a midnight screening!

The S/VFX were all top shelf in this film, but it had two downfalls; one was the constant cheesy and annoying attempts at humor which became cringeworthy fast. The other was the convoluted screenplay. The conceptual story was actually decent, but it ended up all style with very little substance. It was riddled with plot holes, and incohesive and incoherent dialogue. Even the normally comfortable 98 min runtime felt much longer with all the infantile dialogue, terrible humor and some of the long, dragged out and unnecessary scenes. Writer and director Sang-ho Yeon should have made many edits and scene cuts after seeing the final version to at lease create better cohesion. It's a generous 6/10 from me, mostly for the very impressive visuals.

The movie starts of well and has gripping action from the start, the action sequences are some of the most exciting and edge of your seat combat with some cool ethical theorys as well as the morality of ai consciousness but it's structured very poorly. The exposition is thick and fast leaving you little time to really let sink in what has just been said. The action is also condensed into 3 or 4 blocks that while great, serve as little reward for the exposition you sit through to get to that point. While the ideas explored inside are definitely interesting and a great movie could be built on their premise the movie get slightly lost in itself with the amount of detail pushed into what is ultimately quite a short movie. It's a good watch when you can find nothing else but I would say it is a fall back on, rather than searching out.

I'm completely baffled by all the horrible reviews. Did those reviewers even watch the same movie I watched? Is this the best sci-fi I've ever watched? No. But it's pretty decent. The visuals are fantastic. The CGI is convincing. The acting is solid. The storyline is bittersweet and, in some ways, unusual. This is a far-future robot AI sci-fi that has the love between a daughter and her mother at it's core, with no romance (refreshing!). Yes, there are some plot holes. For example, why are they working so hard to make a combat AI robot who keeps failing in simulation when the police AI that society already possesses is so advanced? Still, it doesn't deserve such atrocious reviews and I hope you won't let yourself be put off from trying it.