Film Review — JUNG_E
★★★☆☆
A scientist leads the effort to end a devastating future civil war, creating an AI super soldier using the cloned brain of her mother.
The latest offering from South Korea’s hit-maker, Yeon Sang-ho (Train to Busan, Peninsula), JUNG_E is a lean and mean sci-fi actioner that, while perfectly entertaining, is frustratingly more content leaning into its influences than exploring the promise of its own ideas.
And that’s a real shame as some of its concepts, specifically those surrounding class and rights for artificial lifeforms, are incredibly intriguing. There’s a far more appealing film here, but it's lost in a slurry of story beats and visuals destined to remind you of better films like Robocop, Edge of Tomorrow, The Terminator, and any moment of I, Robot that doesn’t have Shia LaBeouf in it.
Doing their best with a schlocky and, at times melodramatic script, we do get some strong performances from its cast. Kang Soo-yeon, in particular, is excellent, perfectly realising bottled-up grief in a performance that’s restrained and underplayed in all the right moments. Tragically this would be Soo-yeon’s final on-screen performance, passing away in May aged just 55.
It’s not without irony then that her final turn would come in a film that toys with the idea of life after death. JUNG_E doesn’t do nearly enough with this concept. It will, however, inevitably introduce Soo-yeon to new audiences thanks to the film’s wide distribution on Netflix, itself a form of immortality for an acclaimed actress taken far too soon.
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