Space Sweepers, the new big-budget space epic streaming now on Netflix, sounds unmissable for those who watch South Korean content. It stars Song Joong-ki — a beloved South Korean A-lister who I first saw years ago in the historical hit serial Sungkyunkwan Scandal, and who later broke ratings with Descendants of the Sun, and subsequently shattered the box-office with A Werewolf Boy.

The film also stars Kim Tae-ri from The Handmaiden, a critically acclaimed erotic thriller by Old Boy director Park Chan-Wook, as well as well-known actors Jin Seon-kyu (The Outlaws, Extreme Job) and Yoo Hae-jin (Confidential Assignment, The Veteran) voicing a gruff, manly-sounding indestructible robot who turns out to be a woman — but more on that later.

The writer-director, Jo Sung-Hee (A Werewolf Boy and Phantom Detective), relatively a newcomer in the industry, seems to be a find as well. Now, if only he and the powers combined, could have dug deeper to find the essence of this movie, the film could have amounted to something.

As it is, Space Sweepers is a bigger space dud than the space junk its heroes salvage off the rim of the Earth (again, more on that in a bit). The film synthesises core elements of what makes good action movies: there’s a child sought by a nefarious world-dominating corporation, a hero in perpetual anguish, a badass heroine/captain and a once-savage big-shot drug king turned mechanic — everything on display is classic space opera turf.

The parts function well… on paper. Combined together, the cogs grind and wedge against each other, pressuring the machinery until it dislodges.

At times Space Sweepers reminds me of Luc Besson, the writer-director of The Fifth Element, The Valerian, and the writer-producer of the routine, but enjoyable Guy Pearce starrer Lockout. Besson’s works — and his science fiction worlds — are hardly original, but that’s fine. He knows when and where to employ appropriate story beats, predictable or otherwise; here director Sung-Hee’s characters and their plights don’t contribute to the story at all.

Space Sweepers is a bigger space dud than the space junk its heroes salvage off the rim of the Earth

Song Joong-ki is Tae-Ho, a once exceptional ex-military soldier who adopts an orphan and is kicked out of service. With his clean and antiseptic lifestyle yanked away because of senseless reasoning, Tae-Ho and his cute little daughter become homeless vagabonds, scavenging through the uglier depths of society.

Tragedy strikes when Tae-Ho gets his hands on enough cash to live out a week or so: a meteor crashes into their space station, and hundreds are sucked out in orbit. Nearly three years later, Tae-Ho still tries to get his hands on enough money to get government officials to find his daughter’s drifting body.

Other characters barely get one-minute backstories until the last 30 minutes of the film, but they’re supposedly good people to hang out with. Tae-Ho pilots ‘The Victory’ — a scrap collecting vehicle under Captain Jang (Kim Tae-ri) whose crew includes the ex-drug lord Tiger Park (Jin Seon-kyu) and the aforementioned robot called Bubs (the voice of Yoo Hae-jin). Literally fighting for scraps, “Space Sweepers” — outer space trash collectors — seize debris before it collides with space stations.

The topic is timely and of great consequence, because the outer rim of the Earth is already stockpiling man-made debris; in the scope of the story, it barely registers as a ping.

A stranger notion of inclusivity appends itself in the latter part of the film: Bub the robot, voiced by a man (as written earlier), wants to save enough money to put a female skin over its metal body. While I, as a viewer and a critic, have no problems seeing stories of gender representation in films, this story point was just bizarre within the context of this particular narrative.

Just as bizarre — and unappreciative — was the Caucasian villain of the film: James Sullivan (a barely recognisable Richard Armitage, aka. Thorin from The Hobbit), as the corporate head of a company who wants to kill off Earth and its smog-filled, non-vegetated, yellow-toned environment.

Sullivan’s plans make as much sense as his unexplained superpowers (he mostly growls and dark evil veins climb his body), which just manifest out of thin air without explanation. As far as villains go, he is as bad any B-grade baddie from Die Hard 4 and 5.

Everyone seems to be hunting for a small cute girl called Dorothy (Park Ye-rin), who the media announces is a walking, talking bomb. She, as the sci-fi trope would have it, is capable of saving the world.

Space Sweepers seems to be made in the edit room in a rush. Scenes don’t really gel. I couldn’t comprehend if Tae-Ho worked with Captain Jang, because no scene showed him with the crew in the first 15 minutes; when they get together later, the meeting feels abrupt. Most scenes in the film are like that; they make just enough sense to take the story forward.

The VFX are excellent, and the set design is fantastic, if a little SyFy channel-like (a recent series I saw titled Vagrant Queen comes to mind) — but what good are those, and the above-average performances of the cast, if the film itself is a dud.

Streaming now on Netflix, Space Sweepers is rated 16+. There’s nothing to object to, rating-wise

Published in Dawn, ICON, February 14th, 2021