On Na Hong-Jin's Hope

Na Hong-Jin directed The Chaser, which released in 2008. Sudhir Mishra's praise led me to it and I loved it. I remember its foot chase sequences even today. That was Hong-Jin's first feature film. Out in 2026, Hope is only his fourth feature film. Clearly, he is in no hurry to put out films. However, I feel he should put out movies more frequently because, based on The Chaser and Hope, he is a great director.

I got very curious about Hope when it competed in the official selection in the 2026 Cannes Film Festival. A sci-fi action movie competing in the official selection at Cannes shocked me. Would it release theatrically in India? Its genre gave me hope (regular meaning), but I expected the "festival film" tag to hurt the possibility of theatrical release in India. Fortunately, it did release in Bangalore last week and I watched it the day before yesterday. The screen was big, the image quality sharp, and the sound mixing very clear. The theatrical experience of image and sound quality was superlative, one of the best this year.

Hope has extraterrestrials visit and decimate a small harbour town, Hope, in South Korea. At first, we think there is only one alien. After it is taken down just before the intermission, we realise there are aliens. (Note the words 'alien' and 'aliens' because we will return to them.) That's all I'd like to reveal of the story, which is not of much interest to me in this particular movie.

I have read the review by Robert Daniels on Roger Ebert's website and watched the YT review by Christy Lemire and Alonso Duralde. They were disappointed by where the movie went after the intermission but also liked a lot else. They didn't like the interminable road in the final chase, the new team of gun toters who suddenly show up, the aliens' side of the story coming in too late, etc. I noticed while watching the movie all the problems these reviewers have brought up. But I parked them aside because the film was trying to do some other things, which I enjoyed immensely. Let's now discuss everything that I enjoyed.

First, I enjoyed reading the movie as Na Hong-Jin (at least partially) satirising alien invasion movies, violence in movies, etc. This can be seen through examples like the ones that follow.

• The small town of mostly elders has an endless supply of guns and ammunition, and is very well trained in their use. There is even some comedy with a guy having a bow and a quiver of arrows. A policeman questions all the weaponry available to everyone in the small town and the other characters just say something like, "Just shut up and fire!" Through this, Hong-Jin may be telling us that such endless ammo doesn't make sense in action movies but we still buy into this idea in action movies.
• A man heroically takes down an alien and people in the scene praise his shooting skills in an unnaturally excessive way, call him hot, etc. Through this, Hong-Jin may be telling us that the action genre makes violent people attractive. 
• There are repeated lines mouthed by characters going something like aliens can't just show up on earth and mess with human life. A kind of patriotism/love for earth is brought in to make us aware that some movies, like the MCU ones, do this with their saving-earth-from-aliens thing. So it's kind of a nod from Hong-Jin to those movies.

From the points I just made, which I realised as the movie was progressing, I felt Na Hong-Jin doesn't want me to think of the movie's story that much. Perhaps the story is the secondary point of the movie. I did feel the movie's story shift in the second half just like the critics did, but I was okay with it because Hope still maintained the high bar set in the first half in the second half. I enjoyed the second half as much as the first half, unlike the critics.

Now that I have made clear that the story didn't matter to me. The following list has the things that did matter to me. I loved the following in Hope.

• The movie hardly has any scenes in the dark, which is a bold move. It allows us to see the bad CGI or other mistakes in visuals. Most other directors keep their monsters in the dark. Here everything is in bright daylight so poor CGI is visible. The bad CGI didn't hamper my experience though because everything happening on screen is so visually and aurally arresting. This again made me feel that the quality of CGI only needs to reach some minimum level to give weight to the story in the action set-pieces. Once this is achieved, I am sucked in. With Hope, despite its poor CGI, I was immersed because the story during the action is so brilliant.
  
• Hope has a long foot chase before intermission. It reminded me of The Chaser with foot chases in the dark. More movies should have foot chases.
  
• We get a lot of galloping horses in the extended climax. The scenes with the horses are very thrilling, especially the ones in the forest. The horses looked real; the rider looked real; I was convinced they weren't CGI. I was happy to see a proper horse chase with great sound of hooves after decades. One of the John Wick movies had one, True Lies had one, but nothing like what we have in Hope. These horse scenes in the forest and on the highway are so well shot! I was reminded of Kurosawa's Seven Samurai, especially in the forest scenes.
  
• The insides of the alien spaceship in the forest are such great homage to Alien and Aliens. (We return to these words now.) Characters say "alien" and "aliens" in consecutive sentences. Brilliant! Hong-Jin gives a small nod to Ridley Scott and James Cameron. 
  
• There is an autopsy scene, which is fantastically written and shown. It reminded me of Guillermo del Toro's autopsies in Mimic and Hellboy II: The Golden Army. 
  
• An alien's transformation from one creature to another and this alien chasing a car are what we have seen in Transformers, but done so much better here. All the action in Hope is so cleanly framed and edited making it is easy to follow. Michael Bay's action, on the other hand, is hard to follow. It's like Hong-Jin is correcting in Hope what, for me, went wrong with Transformers. 
  

That was a long list of things I like in Hope. In short, I like the very specific and very novel action (horse chases!). I also like how I could see so many of my favourite directors and their movies in this one movie. I will try to watch it a couple more times in theatres. 

The movie ends with the possibility of a sequel, but I feel this is only one interpretation of the ending. Another interpretation is that the sequel hinted at is a joke thrown at the audience. Hong-Jin maybe saying, "You guys will watch anything if a sequel is in the works. So here's a movie, like so many franchise movies, in which I hardly tell you any story but, wait, I promise to tell you so much more in its sequel." I hope we get a sequel to Hope with more novel action or Na Hong-Jin gives us another movie very soon. It would be nice to watch it in a theatre in India.

'Yankee Doodle Dandy' on Super 8

Perhaps the most unique emotion is experienced when this feature ends. I call the emotion "unique" because I have not come across such a feeling in any other movie or novel. 

Here we have an artist performing song and dance his whole life. He has been at the very top of his profession for a lot of his career. He is a performing artist having fun all his life, all his performances are merely entertainment.  I watched the movie thinking, "Here we have another feel-good musical movie.". Then the profundity of the climax came along. Just when I thought the movie will finish with Cagney receiving some award, the screenplay made me experience Cagney's realization of his accomplishment. The song and music he was just having fun with, had inspired an entire nation. Cagney suddenly realized he has lived a great life. In other such movies we know we are watching the story of a great man, sometimes the character's dialogues are written with gravitas. All through such films the character believes in his greatness being realized. Here Cagney realizes this only at the end of the feature, when he is at a very ripe age. Perhaps he wasn't even striving for greatness, he only understands his greatness as we approach the film's climax.

'The Body Snatcher' (1945) on Super 8

A few years before 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers', Robert Wise and Val Lewton picked up a short-story by Robert Louis Stevenson on .... guess what ..... body snatching! Unlike aliens in Don Siegel's extraterrestrial and psychological body snatching, here the medical profession snatches bodies. Bodies 'snatched' from graves are used as reference points to perform surgeries. So who is the Body Snatcher? No one better than Boris Karloff to do this job. He has so much fun with this role, and .... he has so much fun in his scene with Bela Lugosi. 

A point to note, Robert Wise, who went on to 'The Sound of Music' and 'West Side Story', directed Karloff and Lugosi in this B-movie. But don't let that B-movie tag fool you .... this is a A-grade B-movie, if there is such a thing. Anyway, this shows that even A-list greats sometimes start B-movie small.

This is a neat print mounted on two 800' reels. Sound isn't great but the dialogue is understandable. The contrast on the image is good, but the print is grainier in comparison to the best Super 8 prints.

'Horror of Dracula' on Super 8

Despite its B-movie status I have coveted this Hammer Horror title for two years. All I needed was one chance to make it mine. It first came up for sale on the 8mmforum a couple of months ago, but I had two concerns. First, the print was priced higher than it has been in the past. Second, the sound was in German! This meant I'd have to re-record. Since I don't yet possess this skill, paying $$$ for the English remix would escalate costs! WTH, I went for it.

The print reached the remix expert in Los Angeles, from Germany. Just when the seller, me and the remix guru thought all was good, my luck changed. Where a naked-eye-visual-inspection had revealed a good pre-triped print, audio tests on the GS-1200 revealed an inferior, flaking and most likely post-striped magnetic tracks. I was told to expect a poor remix with "rumbles" in the audio, so my ears prepared for thunder. All that money, and I wasn't going to get a good print.

But there is such a thing as a 'happy ending'. I transfered the print from two 800-footers to one 1600-footer, this means I don't have any reel changes. How is the sound? It is .... now what's a good adjective to use to describe sound mixing .... hmmm ... let's use the standard American one .... the sound is amazing! The 'rumbles' were hardly thunderous. And, there were fewer 'rumbles' than I'd anticipated. And, the rumbles didn't mask any dialogue. This is the best audio in my film collection, maybe 'Goldfinger' is slightly better, ah, 'El Cid' had good audio too.

How is the movie? We'd recently watched F. W. Murnau's 'Nosferatu' so the story was fresh in our heads. Sometimes slight deviations from the familiar are good news, so we were happy to see a few "liberties" being taken. Where Murnau gave us a Count we felt sorry for, here Hammer creates an evil Count. Where Orlock dominates screen-time, here Dracula plays second-fiddle to Dr. Van Helsing. Several beautiful women appear in brief but pivotal roles, so the various female characters actually move the story forward. And, the 82-minutes run-time keeps the movie rolling along. What fun!

'Goldfinger' on Super 8

James Bond on film, 007 on Super 8. Ask yourself which movie you'd like. Did I hear Goldfinger? 

Considered by many to be the best Bond Movie of them all, considered by many to star the best James Bond of them all, considered by many to be the best Bond Villain of them all, considered by many ..... This is, arguably, the best James Bond feature in the franchise. Now I haven't watched every single Bond Movie, so I can't say if this is the best for sure. But the one James Bond feature I wanted on Super 8 is 'Goldfinger'.

The feature arrived mounted on four 600' reels. I duly remounted it on one 1200' and one extend-a-reel. Lack of a second 1200-footer arm-twisted me into using one of my 1400-footers. Superb way to watch Goldfinger and Oddjob battle Bond with just one intermission.

Fritz Lang's 'While the City Sleeps' on Super 8

A few nights ago we watched this rare print mounted on four 600' reels. Now Fritz Lang is very famous for his silent films but here we have a talkie, that too on Super 8 film! But this talking picture is no reason to celebrate Fritz Lang, who remains a giant of the silent era.

Here is an excellent idea for a story and screenplay, whose execution isn't particularly bad. The feature works on two levels, one as an office drama and the other as a thriller. The office politics is more engaging in my opinion. Like in most movies there are several beautiful women, only here they fit into the thriller segment of the story. Every time a beautiful woman walked into the frame, I felt she would be the next victim of the serial killer. Very soon we have too many such women and guessing who the screenplay will sacrifice becomes difficult. This maintains a certain suspense in the picture. All in all, a very good movie but can be skipped.

'The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari' on Super 8, with music score

Two genres seem hot among film collectors: Horror and Sci-Fi. No horror collection is ever complete without The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Finally, after almost two years, I have a Super 8 sound print of this title mounted on one 1200' reel.

My wife and I watched Dr. Caligari for the first time on DVD, four years ago. Back then the feature floored us. Even today it sucked me right in. My wife however felt that the sense of mystery was lost second time around. All the buzz around Dr. Caligari drew my brother to this screening, he didn't like it all that much.