The Moon / 더 문 - Movie Review

The Movie: The Moon / 더 문

The Director: Kim Yong-hwa

The Cast: Sol Kyung-gu, Doh Kyung-soo, Kim Hee-ae, Jo Han-chul, Park Byung-eun, Choi Byung-mo, Hong Seung-hee

The Story: A man is left in space due to an unfortunate accident while another man on Earth struggles to bring him back safely.

The Review:

This movie feels like a mashup of Alfonso Cuarón's Gravity and Ridley Scott's The Martian and I mean that in a good way. While I wouldn't say that director Kim Yong-hwa's latest feature matches each of those films in overall quality, it does hold a lot of similarities in story, tone, and the basic idea that space travel is about as dangerous of a challenge as human beings could ever take on.

The bravery and heroism displayed on the other films is firmly in place here as well with strong performances from Doh Kyung-soo as crew member Hwang Sun-woo and Sol Kyung-gu as Kim Jae-guk, the former head of the space center who is tasked with finding a way to bring home the astronaut safeuly against seemingly impossible odds. Director Kim keeps the intensity and stress levels cranked up through most of the film with only a few bits of long winded explanation sprinkled in here and there because you have to do that sometimes.

The special effects from beginning to end match up with just about anything out there these days and probably better than most of the type of blockbuster films that people have been complaining about the last couple years. Everything looks and feels like you are right there in space living out and feeling every moment of danger which really helps to sell the overall story. This movie really shows that you don't need the biggest budget or an army of artists to pull of something that looks and feels authentic when thrown up onto a big screen in a movie theater.

For some reason South Korean films almost always manage to hit me in my emotions and this movie is no exception. I guess they just really know how to tell an emotionally engaging story to go along with whatever genre the story is coming out of. If you have a chance, please watch this movie, I'm pretty sure you won't be disappointed.