Friday, March 29, 2024

Movie Review: ‘JUNG_E’ is Yeon Sang-ho’s Weakest Effort Yet


Director: Yeon Sang-ho

Writer: Yeon Sang-ho

Stars: Kang Soo-yeon, Kim Hyun-joo, Ryu Kyung-soo

Synopsis: On an uninhabitable 22nd-century Earth, the outcome of a civil war hinges on cloning the brain of an elite soldier to create a robot mercenary.


You may have not realized that Train to Busan director Yeon Sang-ho has a new movie out on Netflix called JUNG_E, because the streamer barely promotes their content, even when a high-profile filmmaker is at the helm (and it’s part of the reason why I’m still baffled that All Quiet on the Western Front got nominated for so many Academy Awards). But Netflix may have not wanted to promote JUNG_E partly because it’s not very good, even if it has some attractive visual-effects-driven action set pieces at its core. 

Many will watch the movie for Kang Soo-yeon’s last performance, who passed away suddenly in May of last year. She plays Yun Seo-hyun, the team leader at Kronoid Laboratory, who are creating androids by the name of JUNG_E after her mother, Yun Jung-yi (Kim Hyun-joo), the most decorated soldier in South Korea and a war hero, who died in combat. The film is a moral quest between Yun, who doesn’t want Kronoid to use Jung-yi’s mind to create JUNG_E, and Kim Sang-Hoon (Ryu Kyung-soo), the director of Kronoid who wants to replicate JUNG_E into an army of Androids. 

And most of it is pretty boring. Running at only 99 minutes, the film’s pace feels amazingly lethargic, but also skimps on good character development. The only thing that held my attention was its visually staggering action sequences, beautifully shot by Yoo Ji-sun, bringing an elaborate visual palette to the movie. Sang-ho creates a great sense of rhythm and kineticism during those sequences, held together by a magnetic performance from Kim Hyun-joo, who hits all the right emotional notes as JUNG_E/Jung-yi. 

There isn’t that big of a difference between JUNG_E and Jung-yi. They both possess the same emotional qualities, since they share the same brain, but the scene in which she (brutally) finds out she is an Android feels devastating. It’s the only scene that has legitimate emotional weight, in part because Sang-ho uses the action not necessarily as a cathartic device to make the audience hoot and holler at the screen (it is badass, I won’t lie), but as a driving force for JUNG_E’s central emotion. Jung-yi wanted to go back to her daughter, who was in surgery at the time, but will unfortunately perish at the same time and place, even though it’s a simulation.

Those moments are rhythmically involving, because Sang-ho creates an amazing sense of rhythm and tension within the action scenes. There are no wasted moments within the climax either – with eleven minutes before the movie reaches its end, out comes one of the most exciting third act endings in Sang-ho’s career. A beautifully shot subway chase of robots fighting robots! It never disappoints. 

However, it happens way too late for the audience to care about what’s happening on screen. Sure, the performances are all great, especially Hyun-joo as the film’s titular character, but the characters severely lack in development, most notably Soo-yeon. Her final performance is emotionally investing, but the character isn’t as compelling as Sang-ho thinks it is. There are many holes left in her arc by the time the film ends. And whether it was intentional or not, it feels as if something was missing to truly lock the audience into the movie. Flashy action sequences are one thing (and they’re all amazingly executed), but if the story doesn’t support it, you only have one piece of the puzzle. Because of this, JUNG_E falls amazingly flat on its face, and it may be the reason why Netflix didn’t want to market this in the first place (but they never market anything anyways). 

Grade: C-

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