Jung_E

I love Korean made movies. Especially the sci-fi stuff. However, the only thing that I wish would happen is they get more gritty and realistic. People do not interact like they write into these movies. Dispense with the goofy material in a serious movie. It's not a comedy. Flipping from super serious to goofy comedy side characters is like cars crashing into one another. The transition is tough to deal with. People like serious movies. They also like comedies. But you gotta pick one. This one should have been all serious. Dispense with the dopey science assistants and improve a bit on the sci-fi effects, and you've got an 8-9 hit! But I don't want to detract from the general story which was still very good.

Stumbling upon the 2023 South Korean action sci-fi movie "Jung_E" on Netflix, of course I had to watch it. I had never actually heard about the movie prior to sitting down to watch it, so I didn't really have any expectations to the movie.

And truth be told, I am not particularly a huge sci-fi fan, so I can't claim that I was particularly thrilled to sit down to watch this movie from writer and director Sang-Ho Yeon. But of course "Jung_E" deserved a fair chance, and thus I opted to watch it.

"Jung_E" certainly was a visually impressive movie, and I must admit that I was definitely enjoying the special effects and CGI in the movie. It looked and felt like a futuristic movie, without a doubt. And the special effects in the movie certainly does a lot to lift up and carry the movie.

As for the story and script in "Jung_E", as written by Sang-Ho Yeon, well I wasn't overly impressed and was actually only mildly entertained by the storyline here. It was simplistic and generic, and there wasn't really much food for thought as the storyline trotted on for 98 minutes. Sure, it was watchable and fair enough for what it was, but this was by no means a groundbreaking sci-fi tale.

They had a good cast ensemble in the movie, just a shame that the actors and actresses were somewhat held back by a bland script.

I am sure that diehard sci-fi fans will get a much greater kick out of watching "Jung_E" than I did as a mere casual viewer.

My rating of "Jung_E" lands of a five out of ten stars.

I'm completely baffled by all the horrible reviews. Did those reviewers even watch the same movie I watched? Is this the best sci-fi I've ever watched? No. But it's pretty decent. The visuals are fantastic. The CGI is convincing. The acting is solid. The storyline is bittersweet and, in some ways, unusual. This is a far-future robot AI sci-fi that has the love between a daughter and her mother at it's core, with no romance (refreshing!). Yes, there are some plot holes. For example, why are they working so hard to make a combat AI robot who keeps failing in simulation when the police AI that society already possesses is so advanced? Still, it doesn't deserve such atrocious reviews and I hope you won't let yourself be put off from trying it.

The movie starts of well and has gripping action from the start, the action sequences are some of the most exciting and edge of your seat combat with some cool ethical theorys as well as the morality of ai consciousness but it's structured very poorly. The exposition is thick and fast leaving you little time to really let sink in what has just been said. The action is also condensed into 3 or 4 blocks that while great, serve as little reward for the exposition you sit through to get to that point. While the ideas explored inside are definitely interesting and a great movie could be built on their premise the movie get slightly lost in itself with the amount of detail pushed into what is ultimately quite a short movie. It's a good watch when you can find nothing else but I would say it is a fall back on, rather than searching out.

The S/VFX were all top shelf in this film, but it had two downfalls; one was the constant cheesy and annoying attempts at humor which became cringeworthy fast. The other was the convoluted screenplay. The conceptual story was actually decent, but it ended up all style with very little substance. It was riddled with plot holes, and incohesive and incoherent dialogue. Even the normally comfortable 98 min runtime felt much longer with all the infantile dialogue, terrible humor and some of the long, dragged out and unnecessary scenes. Writer and director Sang-ho Yeon should have made many edits and scene cuts after seeing the final version to at lease create better cohesion. It's a generous 6/10 from me, mostly for the very impressive visuals.