Everything and nothing has changed for Yeon Sang-ho since Train to Busan, his 2016 horror that put the “loco” in “locomotive.” Audiences were all aboard that bonkers South Korean zombie adventure, which hurtled towards its destination calling at Sharp Social Commentary and Tender Parent-Child Emotion along the way. Seven years later, the writer-director at first glance seems to have turned the same screenwriting playbook towards dystopian sci-fi. JUNG_E, set almost 200 years in the future, centres on two disconnected family members trying to repair their relationship, amid explosions on trains in a world full of brutal class divides. Sound familiar?
Look a little closer, however, and JUNG_E is more ambitious than anything he’s previously attempted, world-building with the confidence of someone with a string of South Korean hits (Busan sequel Peninsula and the country’s first ever superhero movie, Psychokinesis) now under his belt. Artificial intelligence, climate change and humanity’s unbreakable habit of starting wars are just a few of the hot-button topics the film boldly tackles, resulting in an Elysium-esque tale that swings for the fences and hits more times than it misses.
It’s intimate and emotive, if not quite perfect.
Don’t be fooled by the film’s epic premise. The inter-colony war teased in its introduction may hint at an action spectacle, but for the most part remains a backdrop. Instead, JUNG_E mostly unfolds in labs and the metaverse, as terminally ill scientist Seo-hyun (the late South Korean superstar Kang Soo-yeon, in her final role) races against time to resurrect her mother, legendary mercenary Yoon Jung-e, in the form of a combat robot.
It’s intimate and emotive, if not quite perfect: the pacing sometimes feels off, with action scenes interspersed at unusual times. It’s also hard to shake the feeling that a greater story is going untold here; that audiences might enjoy seeing the war threatening to tear humanity apart, instead of having to settle for hearing about it.
But Ex Machina-style ethical questions and the film’s impressive imagining of Earth’s discarded cities of tomorrow ultimately make this a worthwhile watch, rich in feeling. If you’re not moved by some of the final-act emotion between Seo-hyun and Yoon Jung-e, you might just be a robotic clone similar to Seo-hyun’s test subjects.