Space Sweepers

I think you'd appreciate this one TAZ -- Space Sweepers. Came out this year. It's little guys vs the big-bad guys, with lots of action and a redeeming message. Plus the lead actors are very good, their ensemble work excellent. And there's a cute kid everyone falls in love with, even at first when they think she's an android with a hydrogen bomb inside her.  

I've been watching a lot of Korean cinema and really like Kim Tae-Ri, the female lead. She was in the 2018 historical drama (ok melodrama) series Mr. Sunshine. You would not have liked that I'm pretty sure but this action flic -- yes. Weaponry fancy-slick as Men in Black. In space fight scenes Star Wars level. Fight like hell moxy that's been compared to Guardians of the Galaxy. And lots of nanobots doing all sorts of things.

The plot does this recursive move we're seeing a lot know, where we think one things a done deal and then see a flashback showing what everyone actually did to save the day, fooling the big-bad guys and us as well. 

The captain, Kim Tae-Ri, gets in a cop's face.

I don't want to spoil the ending. Well, I do but I won't. Somehow we have 3 million plus hits (!!?) so I figure someone is reading this. So I'll say to them what I'd say to you if you were here -- watch this movie! 

And an extra neat thing is that the lowly space sweepers class of which our heroes are part, a motley crew of grungy mechanics, laborers and seat of the pants pilots, are from all over the earth. As in the wonderful Chinese sci-fi epic The Wandering Earth they unite in the end to . . . woops: I'm not saying. But it's heart warming and rousing. Corny, you'd probably say, especially the way the male lead, the pilot, is driven by guilt over his daughter's death, but the actors pull it off. 

I'm giving this 3 1/2 stars. It's not great art but it's darned entertaining. I'd give it 5 except for the rough pace of the exposition: we learn the interesting history of the leads very near the end, and the father-daughter flashbacks are satisfying but perhaps a bit too long or too . . .  something, peripheral perhaps. Maybe I just wasn't watching closely enough at the start to absorb the characterization and so wasn't as interested as I might have been in the pilot's backstory.  And also the villain seems a caricature and badly acted, sort of like the Governor in The Walking Dead. The casting of the non-Korean actors as well as their make-up and wardrobing felt off...cultural signals crossed. But that's a small quibble.  

Space Sweepers swept me away. Let's see if we can get one or more of the triplets here to start reviewing. Jamarr the 2nd said he's look at ways to monetize it. That'd be cool.