We review ‘Hope’, a film that opens in theaters today, Friday
When stories are written about 21st century cinema, the release of “Memories of Murder” in 2003 as the international starting point for an amazing generation of directors who have exerted enormous influence around the world. One of them would be the director of that film, Bong Joon-ho, who ended up establishing himself after sweeping the 2019 Oscars with “Parasites”. But we should also mention many others, such as Park Chan-wook (“The Maid”, “Old Boy”), Kim Jee-woon (“Two Sisters”, “I Found the Devil”) or, on more arty grounds, Hong Sang-soo (“Now yes, not before”, “On the beach alone at night”). Likewise, any film buff attentive to these two golden decades of South Korean audiovisuals would add the name of Na Hong-jin.
Before “Hope”the film that now comes to us after a tumultuous premiere at the last Cannes Festival, something unusual for a work that for a good part of its two hours and forty minutes of footage is pure unleashed action, Na Hong-jin He had only made three feature films in almost two decades of career: a powerful thriller set in a single night in Seoul, with an ill-advised (anti)hero who faces a serial killer (“The Chaser”); an epic nihilistic and brutal revenge story, halfway between Scorsese and Michael Mann, titled “The Yellow Sea”; and, finally, an original and labyrinthine horror film inspired by the shamanic tradition of his country, “The Wailing”. And yet, none of them had prepared the viewer for “Hope”for good and bad.
“Hope” It takes place in a small rural town of the same name, located near the border with North Korea. A neighbor alerts the police chief, Bum-seok (Hwang Jung-min), after finding a mutilated beef in the middle of a road. It is not clear what kind of animal could have killed her. Maybe a Siberian tiger? someone suggests. The explanation does not convince anyone, but a party of hunters is organized to track him in the forests surrounding the town, while the police officer returns to Hope to alert the authorities.
However, when he arrives he finds the town plunged into Dantesque chaos: buildings with destroyed walls, fires and corpses scattered throughout the streets. In “Hope” There is something much more dangerous than the fiercest of felines. Over the next forty minutes, the hapless police chief pursues an incredibly fast and deadly creature by car and on foot, amid an escalating spiral of horrors. And what awaits hunters in the forest is even more amazing.
“Hope” It is divided into two very long action scenes, with a short pause in between. And in both they are prodigious, fluid, full of emotion, humor and energy, an exhibition of their director’s talent for visual narrative. By themselves they are enough to place “Hope” as the best-shot action movie, probably, since the last “Mad Max” by George Miller. In that sense, it does not disappoint at all. But, in addition, there is the science fiction component.
This one is somewhat more debatable due to its predictability, and features the appearance of several Western actors (Michael Fassbender, Alicia Vikander and Taylor Russell) in what we might say are quite curious roles. When there are just a few minutes left until the end of the film, it takes a new turn that places it in a “space opera” setting. The “terrestrial” characters seem totally overcome by circumstances. And suddenly we understand that nothing ends here. We will have to wait for a second part.
Yeah “Hope” would have worked on its own would deserve a higher rating. However, it is still one of the most surprising experiences that cinema has given us in 2026.
