The Moon

As I write this review, a Russian craft is on its way to the Moon, hoping to land at its south pole and search for ice. Only Russia, China and the US have ever successfully brought back samples from the Moon, and only the latter has ever landed people there. After a slow period, interest in doing so is growing once again because of the possibility pf mining helium-3, which exists in large quantities close to the surface, for use as a high yield, low pollution fuel here on Earth. The latest work from Kim Yong-hwa posits a situation in which South Korea has joined the race to land an astronaut who can bring back samples with a view to establishing a future mining operation.

As the story begins, the second such South Korean mission is about to set off, following the explosion of the first rocket several years earlier. On board are the highly trained Cho Yoon-jong and Lee San-won, along with relative newcomer Hwang Sun-woo (Do Kyung-soo), who happens to the son of one of the engineers involved in designing that first rocket, a man who killed himself following the disaster. Their spacecraft, Woori-ho, is nearing its target when high solar winds caused by a coronal mass ejection from the sun knocks out communications. It also damages their solar panels, and Cho and Lee, spacewalking to repair them, are caught in an explosion. By the time the control centre is able to get back in touch, only Hwang remains alive, trapped in a damaged vessel which he cannot steer and which only has enough air left for five days.

The rest of the film follows efforts to rescue the imperilled astronaut, as one thing after another goes wrong. Spearheading effort is the space programme’s surviving engineer, Kim Jae-gook (Sol Kyung-gu), whose coping response after the disaster was to move away to a remote mountain. His ex-wife (Kim Hee-ae) happens to work for NASA and is gradually persuaded to help in small ways, although she cannot persuade her cartoonishly mean supervisors to intervene directly. He also has a loyal intern, Han-byul (Hong Seung-hee), who follows him everywhere and provides a point of connection for younger audience members, able to use a different generational skillset to help Hwang when it seems that no-one else can.

The heavy emotional drama here mostly lands on the shoulders of Sol, whilst Do gets to focus more on action. He’s competent enough at communicating fear and frustration, and his youthful looks make Hwang a sympathetic figure, for all that we are told that he’s an ex-Navy SEAL and highly competent. Of course he ends up on the Lunar surface – one imagines that viewers would have been pretty annoyed otherwise – but that’s far from the placid environment that footage of the US missions has taught us. The science is adequately worked out, even if the number of times that thousand to one shots come off starts to get a bit excessive, and there are some real thrills.

The film is too long, and would be more effective overall if some of those twists and turns were cut out, but then, most big budget thrillers today have the same problem. It’s also a little too soapy in places, but that will both native Korean audiences less. Most cinemagoers will be happy enough, however, as it looks great and it really does deliver where it counts. Director Kim makes good use of the combination of vast scale and claustrophobia, fame and isolation. One man’s plight brings political issues, both national and international, into focus, and beyond the various disasters is a bold optimism which reassures audiences that no matter how difficult life on Earth may be becoming, we need not give up on reaching for the stars.