The Moon review: EXO’s Doh Kyung-Soo is stranded in space in exciting but unrealistic thriller
The Moon (PG13)
Starring Sul Kyung-Gu, Doh Kyung-Soo, Kim Hee-Ae
Directed by Kim Yong-Hwa
China turns a man stuck on the moon into a comedy, Moon Man.
Korea makes it a smasher-thon trapped in a washing machine inside a giant black void.
After a major incident, sole-survivor rookie astronaut, Hwang Sun-Woo (Doh Kyung-Soo from boyband EXO), gets banged up in both space suit and spacecraft on the lunar surface.
Man, you’d think all this is happening in an inner street on Earth instead of outer space. How can someone be tossed by a moonquake, hit by a meteor shower and flung about like a rag doll on craggy rocks without getting a game-over puncture?
The Moon is an exciting disaster action-drama. Something keeps going wrong just when things seem okay.
The CGI showing big collisions is, well, visually smashing. The leads are fine and the tale is K-style sappy on a personal level while dramatically overblown on a grander one.
Korean pics cannot resist a mushy backstory. So the dishevelled hero in Mission Control, Kim Jae-Gook (Kill Boksoon’s Sul Kyung-Gu), spouts urgent orders as a dishonoured former flight director whose previous attempt to the moon ended in a deadly blow-up.
Summoned from his remote observatory, he’s resurrected straight into the action. Turns out he has an emotional connection to the marooned chap.
The Moon: Sui Kyung-Gu is upset that his food delivery hasn’t arrived yet.
Writer-director Kim Yong-Hwa (Along With the Gods series) wants to “present a story that is realistically possible under the technological prowess of Korea”.
But Korea’s version of Gravity is quite a Mission Incredible as headman Kim flits in and out of the control room like Apollo 13’s Ed Harris on steroids. A pity because this flick takes itself seriously as a scientific movie about a national ambition showing how resilient Korea is when they hack it alone since America’s NASA isn’t hopping ASAP to the rescue.
“Forget his nationality for now ... You are the only astronauts who have the power to help him,” pleads Yoon Moon-Young (The Queenmaker’s Kim Hee-Ae), the female director of NASA’s Lunar Gateway station — cue International Space Station — to the ang mohs floating nearby.
While this white-saviour angle feels too contrived, Yoon — Kim’s ex-wife — is quietly gutsy as she goes rogue to help Hwang, provoking extreme prejudice from racist US officials. The main bigot refers sneeringly to her “Korean husband”.
Hang on. Did somebody get the country wrong here? Isn’t Korea a much-loved US ally? A Korean astronaut really did fly up to the ISS before.
Hwang, a former Navy Seal, is stranded when a solar flare strikes the command module in orbit, triggering a fuel-leak explosion which kills his two senior crewmates.
He seems too young to be home alone, never mind space. Kinda looks like K-pop caught in a capsule here.
EXO-dude Doh plays his solo part effectively as a puppy needing to grow up quickly in front of the world watching the livestream. Injured with dwindling oxygen, he needs to position himself for rescue.
Although, actually, it’s he himself who rashly decides to scoot down to the moon in the first place, despite strenuous objections from everybody, to fulfil his duty to honour his country.
I tell you, kids, these days, they just don’t listen.
Down here on Earth or up there in space. (3/5 stars)
