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Hope Review: Big Spectacle, Not Enough Substance
By Justin D Williams
There is a lot about Na Hong jin’s Hope that I genuinely admire. The direction is excellent, the performances are strong, and the movie knows how to create chaos on a massive scale. Unfortunately, underneath all of that technical ambition is a film that left me constantly wanting more from its characters and its world. Hope gives us plenty to look at and plenty to question, but rarely gives us enough information to become emotionally invested in what is happening. My biggest problem with Hope is the severe lack of characterization. We spend nearly two hours and forty minutes with these people, yet I walked away feeling like I barely knew most of them. The performances themselves are not the issue because the cast does a great job with what they are given. The problem is that the screenplay rarely slows down long enough to establish who these people are beyond their immediate roles in the situation. When characters are placed in danger, I understood that I was supposed to care, but the movie had not done enough work to make me emotionally attached to them.
The world building suffers from the same problem. Hope constantly drops little nuggets of information about what is happening, the creatures, their motivations, and the larger implications of everything unfolding around the town. Instead of those pieces gradually forming a complete picture, they often just create more questions. I enjoy movies that leave certain things open to interpretation, but there is a difference between intentionally keeping something mysterious and simply not developing the world enough. By the end of Hope, I felt like I had been given fragments of several interesting ideas without enough information to fully understand or appreciate any of them.
Visually, the movie is also strangely inconsistent. There are moments where the cinematography, environments, action, and destruction look fantastic. Na Hong jin knows how to create tension and stage large sequences in a way that keeps things moving. Then some of the CGI appears and completely took me out of the experience. There were moments where I genuinely felt like I was watching an Asylum film. That is especially noticeable because so much of the surrounding production looks polished and expensive.
What ultimately saves Hope from becoming a complete disappointment is that it remains surprisingly engaging. Despite all of my problems with the characterization and world building, I never really felt the two hour and forty minute runtime. The movie constantly introduces new situations, action sequences, strange developments, and mysteries that kept me curious about what was coming next. Keeping me engaged for that long is an accomplishment, especially when I had this many problems with the screenplay. That is why I completely understand the mixed reception surrounding Hope. There is some impressive filmmaking here. The direction is strong, the actors deliver, the action works, and the movie has enough bizarre and ambitious ideas to keep you watching. Unfortunately, ambition can only carry a movie so far. The lack of meaningful characterization and proper world building prevents much of the spectacle from having the emotional weight it needs. I was entertained by Hope, but I also walked away feeling like I had watched a collection of fascinating ideas that were never developed as much as they should have been.
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