Fans have been waiting for Korean genre auteur Na Hong-jin to make his return after the critically acclaimed The Wailing a decade ago, and finally his long-in-the-works blockbuster Hope is being unveiled to the world. An abundance of action makes Hope a consistently epic and fun picture, allowing it to overcome its shortcomings to be one of the more successful entries in the genre in recent memory.
What is Hope about?
Hope follows the sheriff of a small Korean harbor town who finds himself in over his head in a fight for survival when the idyllic town is disrupted by the arrival of mysterious giant monsters. Na Hong-jin’s latest is cut from the cloth of “new school” kaiju cinema: maximalist, spectacle-driven filmmaking with a minimalist story.
Hope Review
The first hour of the film is a borderline masterpiece of action cinema. It hits the ground running and keeps upping the ante, raising the stakes in ways you might not have even thought possible. Although there’s not necessarily any innovation here, in either the storytelling or how the action is shot, it’s well-made kaiju action reminiscent of modern faves like Bong Joon-ho’s The Host.
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Once this first hour-long action sequence ends, the movie’s momentum slows significantly. The second act is used to provide a bit of context for what is happening, and the film frankly could have done without it. Not knowing what is happening or what these creatures are is almost more intriguing than the world-building we got. However, we get another massive spectacle-driven action sequence as the finale for the final hour, and while it doesn’t rock quite as much as the first part, it’s still incredibly fun.
The main thing that holds Hope back from becoming an instant action classic is that there are a handful of CGI shots — maybe 10-12 — that are distractingly bad. But not every VFX shot looks bad, and there is such a vast disparity between the good and the bad that it’s reasonable to assume that the artists were rushed to meet the Cannes deadline. Thankfully, it’s something that, by definition, can be fixed in post, so by the time the movie actually comes out, you can probably expect these to be spruced up a bit.
Na’s choice to use the film’s Western performers — Michael Fassbender, Alicia Vikander, Taylor Russell, and Cameron Britton — as CGI characters feels like stunt casting. There is really no reason for these A-list actors to play these roles, where they are only speaking in an alien language, and their first appearance elicits a laugh that draws you out of the world that the film is building.
As for the human characters, there is virtually no character development, with everyone in the movie being an archetype: the police chief, the rookie, the local hunter who’s a bit of a loose cannon. But what the film lacks in character development, it makes up for in personality. You might not know anything about who these characters are, but you sure do want to spend time on an adventure with them.
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A lot of the credit for this goes to the cast for infusing their characters with quite a bit of charm. This is refreshing, considering that the weakest aspect of Na’s last movie, The Wailing, was its acting. Hwang Jun-min, who was in The Wailing, makes for a superb action hero. It requires a lot of physicality, but also a sense of humor, and it works. Hoyeon (Squid Game) got applause for her grand entrance, and it’s understandable why — she kicks butt. But the unexpected shining star of the cast is Zo In-sung, who charmed his way into the audience’s hearts with a comedic sidekick turn that is extremely lovable.
Is Hope worth watching?
Hope may not be a perfect movie, with some occasionally wonky CGI and a middle section that slows the film’s momentum down quite a bit. However, as a work of pure spectacle, it’s up there as one of the best action movies since Mad Max: Fury Road, delivering the type of exhilarating carnage one hopes (pun intended) for from a movie like this.
Hope premiered at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival, which runs May 12-23.
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