Let me just say that I adore the fact that other countries are also making Hollywood-quality spacecrap. Check it out; China and South Korea are just as good at green-screen technology as 20thCenParaWBDisneyWorksal, so there’s no good reason why the next Han Solo has to look like, well, Han Solo, now is there? Reading captions is a pain; but if you’re willing to read Klingon, Gungan, or Binary, what’s dif? A good story is worth telling no matter who tells it.
So the Earth is dying. What else is new? It’s the year 2092 and the best stuff is all in space, like Elysium. And like Elysium and several thousand other sci-fi dystopias, everything is a police state. The surface of the Earth has become toxic and unlivable and all the cool kids get to play in the space garden or whatever. Meanwhile, one of the few jobs that remains is hauling space junk. But first, you have to catch the space junk, which “travels faster than a speeding bullet,” you know, cuz science, right? Do the laws of nature stop applying once you’re outside nature? Is that how it works? These folks that hunt space junk down, harpoon it, and tow it back for reuse are called Space Sweepers, just like the title says.
Anyhoo, the biggest bully on the hauling block is something that looks like what you might get if you supersized a damaged toaster. Hey, a flying toaster! That takes me back. The ship is called “Victory,” which if you ask me is setting yourself up for the big hurt, knowwhatI’msayin’? And Victory’s four-entity crew are all kinds of colorful: our main hero, Tae-ho (Song Joong-ki) is a former Commander of the Space Guards – let just call him what he is, an ex Storm Trooper, one who constantly seeks his lost adopted daughter. Captain Jang (Kim Tae-ri) is Victory’s shot-caller; she had a falling out from her past when her attempt to kill 2092’s Bill Gates went awry. Tiger Park (Jin Seon-kyu) is the ship’s engineer. As a former drug lord and martial arts champion, Tiger is the least colorful of the Victory crew … and then there’s the Robot Bubs (voice of Yoo Hae-jin), a bot poker shark who is saving money for gender assignment (you gotta first have a gender before you can re-assign it).
The film figured if it was gonna force 136 minutes of screentime, it may as well load up on backstories.
Plot happens when the crew stumbles across Dorothy (Park Ye-rin), a hydrogen
bomb disguised as a little girl. The Empire wants the girl. The Rebels want the girl. The Victory people want money. Can they trade the girl for better lives? Will they trade the girl for better lives?
I don’t think there are many who will claim that Space Sweepers is great art or a must see. It’s a little [read: a lot] derivative and the script was light on needed exposition in several scenes. However, sci-fi really is much better when you opt for character development; so many outer space films rely on setting to drive the action, but sci-fi films are essentially like every other kind of film – if you don’t care about the people (droids, aliens, monsters, other) on screen, odds are you won’t care about the film no matter what they throw at you. Space Sweepers gave me five characters I wanted to see again; that’s four more than even most good films will give you. Thumbs up, especially for sci-fi junkies.
Who’s in space now, can you guess?
It’s Korean science fiction, no less
For all you hard-cores
It’s just like Star Wars
If you replace the cantina with BTS
Rated TV-MA, 136 Minutes
Director: Jo Sung-hee
Writer: Yoon Seung-min, Yoo-kang Seo-ae, Jo Sung-hee
Genre: Our screwed future
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Space junkies
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Authoritarians
