HOPE - Movie Review

Added: 2026-05-31

[00:00:00]Good evening. This is the Oscar expert here with Brother Bro and it's time to review Hope directed by Nahung Jin. Nah Jyn is a filmmaker that I wasn't really too familiar with before this year. And seeing that Hope was going to can, I brushed up and I was very glad that I did. I loved The Whailing. I thought it was an insanely creative, well- constructed and surprising film. I also watched The Chaser, which I enjoyed, and I found a lot of connective tissue thematically between the two films and came to appreciate the way that Nahung Jin takes the audience on these surprising and emotional journeys, giving the viewer whiplash, making them question everything, and by the end of the film, you're just on the floor completely drained like the main characters were. That being said, you can basically throw out like all of that when you're thinking about his new film.

[00:00:53]We're getting something quite different.

[00:00:55]And for some people, this will be awesome. And for others, maybe not so much. It's been a bit divisive film at the Can Can Film Festival. This is an action thriller. It is a 2hour 40minute monster chase film. The first 30 to 40 minutes where you don't see the monster, I was like, "This is a perfect movie for what it is. It's got sprawling, stunning production design." Like, the amount of care and detail gone into like creating Pure Destruction and the sprawl of the sets was incredible.

[00:01:29]>> Stunning.

[00:01:30]>> Incredible. And you see like it like doubling down on this cinematography style where every shot, nearly every shot is a wide angle. Looks like the Revenant, you know, iPhone shot the movie. I don't mean that in a bad way, though. I I liked the crisp look of it and it worked really well for the action scenes.

[00:01:49]>> If you've seen the trailer, you know what I'm talking about. The camera work here is stunning. The camera is like floating through these sets, weaving in and out of buildings, flying through the forest, often like inches away from the ground. It's very exciting. Like the first 30 to 40 minutes, I was like, "Oh my god, this is like this is so awesome." It's such a pure action film.

[00:02:11]And the reason I say pure is because it's so minimal and stripped down of story and character that you feel like all it's trying to do is just be a pure action film and get you excited. based on level of thrills. Before I get into like my mixed feelings about this film, I want to say everybody had a different reaction to it. My reaction is not going to be indicative of what you will think, but I will say most people really liked it and then you have a lot of people in the middle and then you have some people who thought it was trash. I tend to have much more volatile or negative reactions to action films than the than normal people. Sometimes like pure action, even if I like the style, even if I can appreciate that, if it goes on for hours, I will get tired of it, I will be desensitized.

[00:03:03]And unfortunately, that desensitization happened for me during this film because it truly is a 2hour 40minute chase scene. While there's >> humans chase monsters, monsters chase human, rinse and repeat. That's the film. There are sprinkles of a story being woven or like suggesting that it might be about something else and then all of that comes crashing down because turns out this is a part one and it ends with about a few minutes of some incoherent thing that won't make sense to the audience.

[00:03:36]>> Insane nonsense >> in like complete like nonsense. People being like, "What? What the fuck?" And then the movie ends and it's like obviously a setup for for another film and we weren't supposed to really understand what was going on in those last few minutes. I was already kind of fatigued of the movie, but this really made me think that that was just an atrocious ending. It's not respectful to the audience to even do that kind of ending for them. I'm also of the mindset that if you do a part one, you should at least have a satisfying arc. You should at least tie up some things in your movie. You should make it clear what it's about on a thematic level. that should have some richness to it. This film completely has nothing. It actually started to introduce this idea of like maybe, you know, the creatures that they're fighting have this legitimate fear of us. Maybe they're worth having your sympathy. And then the movie fires bullets into those things as you root for them to like die finally for the rest of the movie. And then it's like, well, why did you even like hint at that and then do nothing with it? Very strange. I think some people will like the movie and then they'll say, "Well, it has depth because that was there."

[00:04:41]But the problem is you didn't extract it enough. Is it possible that in the next film or films you will extract it more?

[00:04:48]Sure. But I'm reviewing this.

[00:04:50]>> I'm not giving it credit for that. On the action, I was very taken with the way that it was filmed. I'm taken with the set pieces, but the action itself is incredibly monotonous. It became a blur to me. every single action scene is people running around with machine guns and trying to shoot the monsters to death and that's it. Every scene, even the opening scene, which again really was into the movie at this point. At a certain point, I thought to myself, the previous, you know, 8 minutes is actually pretty much the same as the last 20. The last hour of the film was very much just the same thing over and over. And I don't know if it's just cuz it's like shot in a cool way that people were into it. If you have no characters for anybody to care about, like anybody could have died at any point in this movie. Anyone's head could have exploded. I wouldn't have given a [ __ ] If you have no interesting twists, no interesting plot, nothing dynamic about it. Nobody has to choose a different weapon. Like, they don't have to plot how they're doing it. They don't have to coordinate with each other. Like, there's just nothing interesting that could maybe feed into the action and make it a little bit more engaging for for me. Like, that's why I was saying though, it's pure in a way. And some people will like that about it. They'll like that there's nothing else to pay attention to other than like the pure visceral thrill of like and and and especially of just the way it's shot, the camera zipping through these sets, but I've never seen anything like this.

[00:06:13]In this one, it's just firing into them and it barely works cuz they have an insane amount of HP and that's it. And even the cinematography at a certain point also became part of this blur.

[00:06:24]Like the shots look cool, but there's not much punctuation with them. Like they're all kind of the same. I will say one important part for this film to work the way that it does is the fact that it's absurd. And I think it's good that it leaned into this absurdism. There are characters who things happen to them that they should be dead and they get up and walk like nothing ever happened. And it's actually really funny. And I think that was good. There were a few flashes during the action scene where something really absurd and funny would happen and I would like it a little bit and then it would go back to me not really caring.

[00:06:58]>> I feel like I haven't gotten to my biggest gripe of the movie.

[00:07:01]>> Yeah, we got to talk about that.

[00:07:02]>> So, my biggest gripe for the movie is as I said, I watched the first 40 minutes was head over heels for the movie and then the monster appears and you know it's like been teasing the monster this whole time. There's a trail of destruction. The monster sucked. the mo the design of the monster sucked and I was like, "Oh no." Like, I don't think that's interesting. The monster looks like a zombie avatar. Like the James Cameron Avatar, the big blue people. I just wanted the monster to be [ __ ] crazy. I thought this is if this is a pure monster film, the monster should be like [ __ ] wild. It should have like five mouths and like tentacles or and [ __ ] If you like if you watch The Host, which this film is probably more similar to The Host than any other film, that monster was compelling and you know, you build up to this monster and then you have the monster appear in daylight, which is also like an interesting choice that this film leans into where the monster is in daylight. It makes the visual effects more difficult to execute. We'll talk about that. But it also like kind of it can take the gas out of it. Whereas like Jaws, for example, benefits from having the monster being able to be obscured in the water the whole time. Now the monster's just here and we see >> is there and you just he's just always like looking the same and he doesn't look very interesting.

[00:08:17]>> It's just basically human looking with a with a couple small differences and green.

[00:08:22]>> The monster is also entirely CGI like which shouldn't surprise you. But some of the creatures were like dead and so they could have them be a tangible prop and those were really cool. I think the the props that were made were for like like the physical ones that were obviously not CGI were actually really cool. And part of the reason the monster sucks is because the CGI looks like it was completely undercooked. Like they actually might keep going with it. I might not have been done for can.

[00:08:50]Apparently they're going to put it back in the editing room. And the physics, the way the monster moved was absurd and it looked like it was like a PlayStation video game cutscene. That's how the monsters looked to me. And for a film that had this kind of hyper realism like you kind of mentioned with the production >> with the production design and the cinematography.

[00:09:10]>> I was kind of going, "Wow, this is so practical. I don't think that I'm seeing any CG with the with these sprawling sets. I'm really, oh my god, there's no CG. I'm so immersed." And then and then the monster is CG and it's so obviously that it just doesn't look like it's a part of the environments and a part of the world. Like unfortunately, I could not get over that. It made every scene that the monster was in for the rest of the film less compelling to me, less engaging, and I was like sorely like disappointed that that I was like, I can't believe this. I can't believe that the visual effects are this bad. I can't believe that the monsters move like this. They don't make any sense. It did get a little better in like the second half. Like the monster becomes something different. And I kind of like the creature that's not really like a human cuz there are multiple monsters in this.

[00:09:52]It is kind of like this like running dog thing. I like that one. I like that one.

[00:09:56]People will probably be thinking, "What if they improve the visual effects?"

[00:09:59]Then you'll like the movie, right?

[00:10:01]>> Um, I would like it more. Like I would be a little probably a little like less taken out of it constantly. But the monster, like I'm saying, the the design of that, it was not good to me. You needed to try to break ground in this way. You are like, if you're a purist monster film, like for example, the camera work was felt kind of groundbreaking for a film that was shot like this. So, sure, part of this was a letdown for me because it didn't have any of the characteristics of Nahung Jyn's work that I came to appreciate, but I I realized after a certain point that this was not that kind of movie and I tried to have fun with it. It feels like people are just praising it for the kind of thing that it is. And I guess I mean they had fun with it. I can't really take that away from them. But when I kind of pick it apart and I'm like the action was not interesting. The story had nothing. I didn't find there to be that much to like about it after a certain point. Really?

[00:10:56]>> I'm at a five out of 10.

[00:10:57]>> I was at a four. And then I found out it was a part one. And I said three.

[00:11:02]>> Get that away from me. Hate part I hate [ __ ] part ones. I feel like part ones. I still enjoyed the movie though.

[00:11:07]And the way it it l lives in my memory is just like what the hell was that?

[00:11:13]Which is kind of fun in a in a in a way.

[00:11:15]How does that movie even exist? How is it in the can competition? But I think people who say, "Hey, look, it's just it's just an action film and I like that." That's fine. I do see some people giving it credit where credit should not be given like saying that the ending is some kind of satire of sequelitis, and I just don't agree. If we if the if the point of the ending is to set up a sequel, how exactly are you satarizing movies that do just that?

[00:11:42]>> Thank you for watching. Thank you for subscribing. Do you have hope for hope?