Yeolhansi

11 A.M. is a Korean sci-fi film that in many ways is a film about human nature, and I appreciate that. In fact, I think the best sci-fi is something that can have meaning that can be applied to us here and now. However, I will admit that the film is confusing at time…but still well worth seeing.

The premise of the film is that a South Korean scientist and his team want to build a time machine and are assisted by the Russians to bring this dream to life. Although it's taken years, the team is finally ready to test the system in their underwater lab. It will be a seemingly small test—to hop one day ahead and stay there only 15 minutes. However, this seemingly simple test turns out to be disastrous—though how disastrous and why you won't realize until late in the film.

When the pair of explorers are transported to their station a day later, they are shocked to find the place in ruins—there are fires everywhere and it appears as if they are all about to die. However, since they only have 15 minutes, knowing exactly HOW to stop it and WHY it's occurring does not seem possible. And, in their rush to get back to the day before, one is accidentally left behind. But, this person left behind is able to come back…though a bit later in the film. However, this late arriving lady behaves strangely—as if she's trying to destroy the project. She even unleashes a computer virus into the system. What gives and why is she doing this? What did she learn on the future base? Or, is she just plain nuts?

The film asks the fundamental question whether or not we can change the future. Well, this isn't an easy thing to answer when you see the film. The film is father fatalistic—but perhaps the problem isn't our ability to change the future but our limitations because we humans are pretty stupid and in trying to change things, we might end up making it all come true! Many more questions will undoubtedly arise as you watch the film—and it really can make your brain hurt a bit with all the possibilities.

I would say this is a very good film—perhaps not a great one, but one that will make you think. Additionally, the movie has incredibly nice production values. The titles, music (with the exception of the Carole King song "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow" which seemed to be a bit overplayed and started to make me twitch!) and sets are all top-notch and there isn't a lot of fault about the movie except that there are so many conundrums presented by time travel…and it all does get a bit confusing to try to sort out in your mind. Still, it's worth seeing and is proof that the South Koreans can make some excellent films…but we non-Koreans just need to be willing to give them a try and get over our apprehension about having to read subtitles…just get over it!

11 AM is a very well constructed movie, with an intriguing story line that draws you in very quickly and the cast and production crew were more than up to the task of executing this script to perfection. I watched this movie on the tiny screen of a KLM airline on my way to Amsterdam from Dubai, surrounded by crying and kicking kids and a large snoring man, but I was blind to my surrounding for an hour and a half.

The movie tells the tale of a research team in an underwater Russian nuclear fusion reactor trying to create a black hole with which to travel in time. After 3 years and one small success the project is set to be scrapped, but the lead researcher schedules one final test run to travel 24 hours in to the future. When he arrives in the future with his (rather cute) assistant, they see the lab is on fire and the crew is no where in sight. While they scurry to collect evidence of their time travel and return to the past someone tries to kill one of them and the assistant is left behind (or is she?). Back in the present the story follows a series of seeming mysteries such as why was the lab on fire? what happens in the next 24 hours? Why is the CCTV footage corrupted? The crew have 24 hours to figure out what happened and stop it.

If you're read or seen scifi on time travel you will guess what happens next. Despite having guessed the biggest "twist" in the tale, I enjoyed the movie because of its sharp acting, noir style atmosphere and enthralling story line. This movie follows well in the foot steps of Oldboy (ok maybe not THAT good), I saw the devil and Memories of murder and should have had more exposure in the west.

Yet another disappointing Korean SF film, 11 A.M. starts out potentially promising, but devolves into a nonsensical mess of melodrama (so many tears!) and laughably bad science very quickly. It's a shame that decent actors and such a great set--and budget--were wasted on such a turkey of a script. One only wishes that people in the Korean film industry would hire actual Korean SF authors (or even just science consultants) before greenlighting scripts like these.

That said, the sets and the special effects deserve recognition, and the actors did the best they could with what they had. Maybe the director was trying to appeal to a "mass audience" in Korea by including all the romantic-family-backstory melodrama, but plenty of foreign SF films (and even mainstream TV series) appeal to large Korean audiences without all that weepy family drama stuff.

I really enjoyed this movie, everyone did a great job and the plot was cool!

I also want to mention there's an apparent redo of this film called Paradox (2016) which shares the same storyline with a few twists. I was unable to find credit given to the original however which was disappointing as they're clearly the same films for the most part.