Sci-fi thriller 'Hope' lets action do the talking

Director Na Hong-jin says the action in “Hope” tells the story just as much as the dialogue does in his new sci-fi thriller film.

Speaking at a press conference for “Hope” in Gangnam District, southern Seoul, on Monday, Na said the key to the action was making sure each sequence could carry the story the film wanted to tell on its own.

“When I prepare a film, I tend to think audiences can be divided broadly into two groups,” Na said. “A film is made up of visuals and sound. Some viewers take in the visuals and sound as they are, while many others try to understand a film through text.”

“So I think a lot about how to make the film equally enjoyable for both kinds of viewers,” he said. “With this film, I thought [...] the story had to be felt through the action. Without relying on dialogue, explicit explanation or description, I had to express the message the film wanted to leave behind and communicate through action.”

That meant that in one scene, where Zo In-sung’s seasoned hunter Sung-ki fights back against a towering alien capable of throwing people 10 stories into the air, there is no monologue about wanting to live. Instead, it is the bloodied, heaving man clawing at the grass as he tries to stand, reaching for his knife to fight a monster he could not bring down even with a gun.

“Zo In-sung could have screamed, ‘I really want to live,’” Na said. “But instead, we wanted that sense of [fighting for] survival to come through the action.”

The film may rely heavily on action, but when its characters do speak, they are rarely short on expletives. After the film’s premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in May, one review that said “80 percent of the script is [an expletive], and I am here for it” went viral.

As seen in Monday’s screening, profanities spill almost nonstop from the characters as they repeatedly confront unexpected, terrifying situations. 

“I was acting alongside a master of profanity,” actor Jung Ho-yeon, who plays rookie cop Sung-ae, said, referring to Hwang Jung-min, who plays police chief Bum-seok. “I studied his previous works, because I thought my character, as a police officer, would inevitably share certain similarities with the police chief.”

“People ask why there is so much swearing, but [the actors] never used any expletives that weren’t already written in the script,” Na said.

Because the action was so central to the film, Na said he sometimes chose cinematic impact over strict realism when it came to the weapons. Some of the film was shot in Romania, where the crew had limited options after problems arose with the firearms they had originally planned to bring in from France, he said. Romania’s history with Russian weapons meant AK-style firearms were among the options available, along with guns that could fire only single shots.

“I talked it over with Zo In-sung, and we decided, let’s just go all out and fire the AK on full auto,” Na said. “So, yes, it wasn’t historically accurate, but that’s how we ended up preparing the AK.”

For his part, Zo, who had some of the most grueling action scenes in “Hope,” said he practiced horseback riding two to three times a week for about three months to prepare for the role.

“I tried riding on asphalt and on open ground, and I worked to get in sync with the horse,” Zo said. “But it really wasn’t easy.”

“Unlike a car or a motorcycle, a horse is a living animal,” he said. “If the horse’s condition didn’t match mine, it could hit the brakes at any moment, regardless of what I wanted. That made me realize again how difficult it is to work in sync with a horse.”

All in all, Na said, he was “extremely thankful” that all three actors were able to finish the film safely and without injury.

“Hope” is set in Hopo port, a fictional harbor village near the Korean demilitarized zone, where the isolated community is suddenly thrown into chaos after a series of mysterious cattle killings. What they first believe to be the work of a tiger turns out to be something far more terrifying and unknown, forcing the police and residents to arm themselves in a fight for survival against the creatures.

The film, set to release domestically on July 15 and in the United States and Canada on Sept. 9, made its international debut at Cannes as the only Korean title to compete for the top prize, the Palme d’Or.

The movie has since been edited ahead of its Korean box office release, according to Na.

“About five minutes were actually cut,” Na said. “Some material was removed, but about three to four minutes were added back in, so the final version ended up changing by about three or four minutes.”

“I gave it everything until the very end, and I have no regrets or lingering attachment,” added the director, who said he had obsessed over the details in specific scenes. “Now I’m just waiting for the day when I can finally let this film go after having watched it thousands of times, and never watch it again.”

BY KIM JU-YEON [[email protected]]