Space Sweepers (2021)

Good Sci Fi flick with heart. Would have been great if it had ended a little earlier.

This Sci Fi flick has awesome production values - the CGI and action scenes are top notch. There's a very simple story. The space sweepers are the "poor" from earth that make their living scavenging waste left behind by the rich and powerful, who have all escaped into space since we didn't take care of earth and it's now dying slowly. The protagonist's daughter died in an accident and he's doing everything he can to get enough money so the official channels can find and retrieve her body before decaying orbit causes it to burn up on re-entry. Then, one salvage mission discover "Dorothy" a robot captured by terrorists that contains a bomb.

The reaction of crew of his vessel, The Victory, is mixed, but the acting is top notch. The captain is suitably bad-ass, the former gangster with tattoos and dread locks is EVEN more bad ass, and the funniest and baddest ass of them all would have to be ... the robot. Yes. The former military assassin robot who is SUCH a capitalist he/she cheats his/her crewmates at cards, so that he/she can get skin grafts. He/she is awesome! They should make a whole movie based on the adventures of this wise cracking robot. The little girl is cute and supporting characters do well, including the villain.

The story is quite predictable in parts, but the father-daughter and family bond are both effective and heart warming enough to tug on one's heart strings. Who isn't going to melt at a cute kid drawing pictures of you? *arrow slams into heart* aaak you got me, you got me good.

If this movie had ended with the crew sacrificing themselves with the bomb, it would have been a 9, maybe even 9.5. Heroic tragic endings, THAT is the Korean Way. But somehow, they introduced a Deus Ex Machina, which made me immediately feel cheated. It turned it into more of an "American" movie, to let the crew live, and each member then has a happy ending. Still okay, but no longer great. I don't know, maybe I'm jaded, but it seems to me the sad ending would have been a better place to end and the movie would have been more of a "Korean" movie.

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A love letter to the scifi genre

Whoever worked on this knew what they loved about the scifi genre and they knew what story they wanted to tell and they did it.
Its a lovely and poignant action filled romp from start to finish.

Acting is great. Characters are touching. Costume and set design is memorable. Action scenes are smooth and stylized. Villian is just the right amount of over the top.

Also, the robot is trans.

And! It felt really international in a way that more media should. I heard at LEAST 6 languages with maim chars and long scenes being in french and english and chinese and korean.

If you like starwars, cowboy bepop, firefly, wall-e, or like any of that kinda of genre of scifi then you will love this.

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Space cowboy meets Vincenzo meets WALL-E

It must be really hard for writer-nim to come up with new ideas for a space movie that has mass appeal and yet be as original as possible. In the case of Space Sweepers, they got 1 out of 2 right.

As an adventure movie, it is a blast (figuratively as well as literally). The 2 hours run time flashed by with little drag. Action was the centrepiece of the show and it runs the gauntlet of thrilling space flights, hand-to-hand combat, full scale space battle and zero gravity gun fights. In between, there were rare moments of the crew taking a breather and giving the found family trope a decent airing. It is a bit of a shame that most of what I have described are derivatives of a number of movies that came before. Classics like Star Wars, Blade Runner, WALL-E and others all casted a shadow on this film.

That is not necessary a bad thing. Many successful films have stood on those mighty shoulders. In this case, the script was good enough to allow it to be seen as paying homage rather than outright plagiarism. It was not quite original though but it got the job done.

Being a Korean production, the Korean leads all delivered strong performances. Even the child actor and the CG android have strong personalities. However, the same can't be said for the international casts. The evil antagonist was the strongest showing of that bunch but minor roles can be a real mixed bag. The least said, the better. ;)

The budget for this movie is over US$20millions (cheap by Hollywood standards). The CGI was really well done, the cyber punk inspired settings were expansive with grimy and edgy interior designs. Space structures are impressively huge and intricate. It is rated M but there is little blood nor graphical violence shown. Dead bodies were surprisingly "clean" even after being shot multiple times by an assault rifle.

As to be expected with this type of sci-fi drama, there are inconsistencies with future techs and pseudo sciences. One particular issue I have has to do with the "indestructible" nanobots floating in space. They are used as a kind of deus ex machina but that also contradicted with an overarching plotline so who is correct? There are other causal effects and subplots that were presented to us as fait accompli so it is pretty much 'ask no questions and you will hear no lies'. :)

Finally, the ending was actually not my favourite. I would have preferred the grittier ending as the story suggested but they must have done some market research and decided to go with a fan service version. They rammed it through but you really have to suspend your disbelieve.

OST is generic techno, heroic, eerie tracks which paired well with the scenes but ultimately forgettable.
Finally, please watch this in the original Korean/multilingual soundtrack. The English dub wasn't bad but it is not the same.

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Entertaining action sci-fi movie, not surprising and flawed but does the job

This movie takes place in a dystopic world as we follow a crew of misfits working as "space sweepers", therefore literally cleaning junk floating dangerously around various orbit stations. The story in itself is not that innovative for the sci-fi and action genre, the peaks and valleys of the script are quite similar to what's already been done but I still found it quite compelling even if not surprising.

I have two main complains regarding the scenario. One being that I found the nanobot technology used too much as a magical tool able to fix a lot of things but not supported by a lot of well constructed storytelling. The way it is used seems rather random and only there to move the plot along than really making a lot of sense. The other flaw being the writing regarding the antagonist who is totally written as a cartoonish villain with very surfaced-level motivations rather than some nuanced character that could bring some deepness to the film.

Regarding the cast, they are some ups and downs as well. I liked a lot the main cast playing the space sweepers team (especially Tiger Park and Buds) as well as "Dorothy". Other than that, I have more mixed feelings regarding the performance of the actors playing the secondary characters (in particular the foreigners). It was mostly average: for some, I even noticed that the language in which they were playing was not their native one (but the script was implying it was), so it gave a really strange vibe to the dialogs which sounded unnatural.

The production value was pretty high: I found the spaceships scenes really nice looking and the visual effects regarding the robots and the technology looked really good overall. The soundtrack was alright but did not make a lasting impression on me.

I would recommend this movie to people looking for an entertaining sci-fi movie. If you enjoy shows like "The Mandalorian" or movies like "Star Wars" or "The Guardians of the galaxy", you might like it (even though you will for sure not be surprised by anything if you have seen / read a lot of similar stuff).

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A mostly forgettable and boring space romp we've seen before

I want to preface that I enjoy Song Joong-Ki and Kim Tae-Ri as actors.

Space Sweepers has all the looks of an ambitious production, but no substance to back it up. It's a real shame and a waste of talent. The plot is fairly generic and definitely something you've seen before if you've watched any science fiction from Hollywood or anime from Japan, which isn't necessarily a problem if it's done correctly (see: Bebop, Cowboy), but this movie is neither compelling or interesting to warrant it's 2 hour runtime.

We learn next to nothing about the characters they introduce us to. The world building is scattered, inconsistent, and most of the time you're stuck watching a gigantic CGI mess. What brought this group of 4 together? What are their goals? How does anyone else feel about the UTS? There are so many underdeveloped plot points, no wonder that it's hard to care about anything that's happening on the screen.

The central antagonist has the same, simple, braindead modus operandi that has been overused to death. Get rid of the filth, save only the elite. What is this? A DC movie? Marvel? He even comes complete with random transformations and changes in voice that never gets explained. His back story even feels tacked on with a short monologue, like it’s supposed to be enough. The movie just drops these minor tidbits about a character's life and expects us to go "Wow, nice character building!" and calls it a day. Imagine if you'd watched Avengers: Endgame without watching any of the previous Marvel movies. That's what this feels like. It "feels" like I'm supposed to care about these characters, but I'm missing so much context as to "why". They meet this random girl, they show us a couple scenes of them interacting, and a minute later, she's like family that's been with them since day one. I don't get it.

In the end, nothing really happens, we ultimately reset to where we were in the beginning, with some slight changes to a robot for some reason? The ultimate climax of the movie is robbed by a stupid power that is never ultimately explained and can seemingly do anything and everything without limit. Who gave this movie Infinity Stones plot armor? It's lazy.

Ultimately, this movie is a ton of sizzle and no steak. The bright colors, star actors and diversity of language gives the appearance of a grand production, but it's ultimately for nothing. Space Sweepers is just boring.

Recommendation: PASS

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I cried lololol

Finally I finished watching this movie omg and I love it. While the story wasn’t really THAT unique if you wanna compare to like many other space scifi movies that came before, it's really an impressive movie. Not to mention it was the first made by Koreans and starring Korean casts.

Never really expect a story about some junk scavengers would spiral into a race to save the Earth but there ya go. I really love how the back stories of the main characters were gradually revealed... not to mention how Taeho turned out to be like Yoo Sijin in space lol. I had lots of tears of sads and happiness throughout the movie I never thought I'd get hit with so much feels in this movie!

And another aspects that I really love in this movie was how much multilingual this movie is like everyone of different ethnicities were a lot of times communicates using their own languages and everyone could understand each other using a universal translation gadgets that they all have. That was really rare to see in even Hollywood movies. I had so much fun watching this movie, I really love it so much!

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it is good but...

I expected a lot since I've seen people praising it as the first-ever science space fiction of kfilms but it did not exceed my expectations. yes, it offers great CGI, wonderful shots but the story is not so jaw-dropping. The casts were great, true! they pulled it off but, the story was lacking. And the plot is not well introduced, thinking how complex it was... it occurred to be quite lousy (for me).

Some people may really like this, for scific suckers for sure and, I did watch it for that. Nevertheless, it is worth watching and a must to recommend.

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Muito divertido!

Eu sei que os gringos estão aqui comentando que o filme é "mais ou menos", mas eu discordo! Tudo nesse filme foi bacana, me diverti muito assistindo. Ele também nos dá muita coisa pra pensar, como o futuro será nada mais, nada menos, do que apenas para os ricos. E os pobres que lasquem.
Uma coisa que eu não gostei é da atuação dos atores estrangeiros, parece pegaram todos os atores que fazem cameos em doramas, e colocaram eles lá. Não gostei nem da atuação do vilão, mas achei bem justo o estereotipo de homem branco, rico, que se acha o dono do mundo. Bem realístico.
Mas o elenco coreano é perfeito, cada atuação. Song parece que voltou a mente pra pegar bons roteiros??? A produção também achei maravilhosa, os efeitos são ótimos. Mas eu tenho mais costume de ver doramas chineses então talvez minha opinião no assunto efeitos especiais não seja muito confiável hahaha
É um filme que tem final fechadinho, mas que podia sim ter continuação. Deem muito amor pra gente ver mais. Bom pra ver com a família, tem muita ação e é engraçado. Não vou dizer que vai mudar sua vida, mas entediado desse filme, você não sairá.

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As an avid Sci-Fi fan I was thoroughly looking forward to this. Space Sweepers doesn't disappoint - The special effects were impressive, the characters were interesting and worth investing in. All the elements are there and the only downside is the plot holes but I can forgive this as it is bloody hard to do a great Sci-Fi from scratch in 2 hours which is why most standalone Sci-Fi films never rate too highly as they have to sacrifice backstory. This movie had all the Serenity vibes going on but don't forget even Serenity had the luxury of a TV series behind it. I actually think Space Sweepers is better suited to a TV series giving the creators an opportunity to plug those plot holes and really flesh out the world they introduced us to. If we are lucky it will be like Battlestar where they are testing the waters before committing to a series - then again that may just be my wishful thinking!

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South Korea is the New Hollywood!

All Hollywood can do anymore is give us CGI-fest films with no depth in character or story, or remakes that are almost all worse than their originals. Typically, the films tend to mirror the demands of their audience; people who can barely sit through anything that actually requires some attention.

Korea gives us a great space story that is a bit of a mixture of Wall-E, Firefly, and Blade Runner. The film also gives us a great balance of story, character, and action. Why does the story work so well? Because like all great storytellers, they focus on the story and the characters.

George Lucas once stated, "a film with special effects and no story is a pretty boring thing." Funny how he would actually end up going against his own proverb, and it is also true of what has happened with much of western filmmaking, as stated above.

The film also has a lot of heart, which will make the viewer all the more appreciative that it isn't just an action movie. This is enhanced by veteran actors like Joong-Ki Song (Descendants of the Sun) and Tae-Ri Kim (Mr. Sunshine) as well as Jin Seon-Kyu.

The movie isn't perfect, but if you want a good story, some laughs, and some great action sequences, you won't be disappointed.

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