Rating: PG-13
Length: 115 minutes
Director: Lee Yong Joo
Cast: Gong Yu, Park Bo Gum, Jo Woo Jin, Jang Young Nam, Park Byung Eun
Release particulars: In theatres 15 April (Singapore)
My ears perk up at any time when I hear the title Park Bo Gum. Having watched him develop from a shy, reticent youth in Reply 1988 to a mature, flourishing younger grownup in Record Of Youth final 12 months actually has set my sights on his thriving profession, desperate to lap up any new content material he places out.
Pair him up with the chocolatey-voiced thespian Gong Yoo (Train To Busan, Goblin: Great And Lonely God) and also you get Seo Bok, a sci-fi thriller that guarantees a lot swearing, pseudo science and rampant devastation.
This is director Lee Yong Joo’s first hand at a sci-fi thriller, having beforehand presided over interval romance and mystery-horror titles, so I wasn’t anticipating something too excessive; boy, was I mistaken.
Ki Hun (Gong Yoo) is an ex-intelligence agent who is stricken by extreme migraines and a very foul mouth. Director Lee should’ve felt both gleefully infantile or petulantly pissed off to make the celebrated A-lister curse a lot throughout the entire course of the movie.
I felt slightly miffed as Ki Hun stumbles by way of his life looking for which means whereas swearing at everybody and all the things, till he comes throughout his former boss, Chief Ahn (Jo Woo Jin) of South Korea’s intelligence company.
Chief Ahn provides Ki Hun a likelihood at redemption and even to miraculously treatment himself of migraines, by being the bodyguard of the world’s first ever human clone, Seo Bok (Park Bo Gum).
Named after Xu Fu, an historic Chinese alchemist and explorer tasked by the Qin emperor to seek out the elixir of life, Seo Bok is a human clone and the very incarnation of immortality and humanity’s biggest salvation; his DNA comprises the strains of self-healing and replication, which after being injected into a human being would grant him eternal life.
But that is not all. Seo Bok’s distinctive structure additionally manifests one other facet impact; unbridled and overwhelmingly damaging telekinesis. Think the best espers and psychics in the world, like X-Men’s Charles Xavier or Tatsumaki from One Punch Man.
What was purported to be a easy escort mission turns into an all-out psychic rampage like in the anime Mob Psycho 100. Ki Hun’s mission to escort Seo Bok turns into one the place he wants to guard Seo Bok from his powers, which quickly surge uncontrolled as his feelings get the higher of him.
As the plot progresses, Seo Bok realises that he’ll eternally be a lab rat, having his DNA sucked out for humanity’s use for so long as he lives; very very similar to extracting bile from a bear saved alive for no different goal than to provide bile.
If you had the elixir of immortality in hand, you’d suppose that everybody would need to get their palms on it, proper? And that is precisely what occurs. Terrorists attempt to abduct Seo Bok, but it surely is clear he does not want safety in any respect.
It’s clear that director Lee enjoys The Matrix vastly, as Seo Bok repels bullets and missiles and all the things else with out a lot as lifting a finger. Gong Yoo is decreased to merely fodder, offering a pseudo older brother-like determine who clumsily inducts Seo Bok into the actual world, who has solely ever skilled life in a laboratory.
Seeing Park Bo Gum’s compelling appearing on the silver display once more actually warmed the cockles of my coronary heart, however the cursing from Gong Yoo and the over-the-top psychic CGI shows actually received in the way in which of the larger questions of how the primary ever human clone ought to discover his place in the world, with out everybody making an attempt to siphon his DNA for eternal life.
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