Neon has set a September 9th North American release for South Korean filmmaker Na Hong-Jin’s action/sci-fi thriller “Hope” following the film’s smash debut at Cannes.
Already dubbed “the Korean ‘Fury Road'”, the film begins in the isolated village of Hope Harbor, not far from the Korean Demilitarized Zone. Police chief Bum-seok (Hwang Jung- min) and officer Sung-ae (Hoyeon) are called to find a mysterious creature that has wreaked havoc on the village.
In the nearby forest, a coterie of hunters, including Sung- ki (Zo In-Sung) set out to track the beast and find themselves hunted instead. But all is not as it seems, and perceptions can be misleading.
What begins as a simple rural emergency quickly snowballs into something far stranger — a cosmic mystery that tears the town’s sense of reality apart. Michael Fassbender, Alicia Vikander, Taylor Russell and Cameron Britton all appear in the film as aliens, while Hwang Jung-min, Zo In-sung, Hoyeon lead the cast.
The most expensive Korean film ever made, the 160-minute film is said to boast essentially two hour-long extended action sequences and marks Hong-jin’s first film since 2016’s highly acclaimed supernatural spooker “The Wailing”.
The film’s premiere at Cannes led to a six-minute standing ovation and a wave of divided critical reaction, some rapturous about it while others seem straight up bewildered. Neon is also releasing the film in the UK and Australia.
Source: THR
