SPACE SWEEPERS (2021)

SPACE SWEEPERS (2021)

Tagline: These misfits just might save the world

(Adventure, Sci-Fi, Space Awesomeness) [R]

Note: This movie did not get an MPAA rating, but because of F-bombs, so I am pretty sure if it had been given a rating it would be an [R]. The movie was also known as SPACE VICTORY. This is one of the few times I have seen where both titles would have equally made sense. This movie does have “space sweepers” and the main ship in the movie is called “victory”. Apparently, this was South Korea’s first sci-fi film set in space. 

The Earth was still breathing, but it was on life support. With Earth no longer habitable, the only place left to go was up.

In this one, we are taken to the year 2092 when the earth is dying and a lot of its trash, obsolete satellites, and de-commissioned spaceships are just floating around in space. Because of this “space sweepers” can make quite a bit of money picking it up. This also created a climate for a lot of rival “space sweeper” crews. The crew of the “Victory” happens upon a small girl among the trash that is thought to be the key to saving mankind, but is she really? 

This movie takes a bit of time to get going but once it does, they do a good job of drawing you in and bringing these characters to life. This movie does have profanity that is a bit “extra”, but because of the kinds of people, we are dealing with, (basically broke space pirates) it fits the script fine. I thought the acting was strong and probably the best performance is delivered by the movie's villain Sullivan played by Richard Armitage. I normally don’t say the villain was the best actor, but it makes sense here because Sullivan was asked to be the most duplicitous and emotional. Armitage also played Thorin in THE HOBBIT series. The dude is a force of nature, and I couldn’t wait for someone to take out his character which means he did a good job. My favorite character was actually Tiger Park played by Jin Seon-kyu. Tiger and Robot Bubs are kind of the softer side of the crew which give this group a very balanced dynamic emotionally and regarding the backstories. The most well-developed character is Tea-ho played by Song Joong-ki and I thought he was good in the role, but couldn’t get into the character's head space as much as I wanted to. For some reason, his daughter is floating around in space, but he needs to pay money for someone to go find her? Not really sure why this was in the script the way it was. I think they could have found a better way to draw out this issue. Kim Tae-ri is epic in this as Captain Jang. She is rowdy but has a heart of gold. I think I like her character Lee Ahn in ALIENOID better, but she’s great here as well. By the way, if you haven’t seen ALIENOID, find a way to see that asap. 

Some reviews are going off about how the plot was weak and didn’t live up to the strong visuals. I actually thought BOTH were strong. If anything the score and soundtrack slip a bit, but neither is terrible. I really can’t find a whole lot to pick on here except that I do wish in this 2-hour and 16-minute movie that they could have thrown in 3 minutes explaining Sullivan’s main robotic counterpart. She gets in an epic fight with Tiger at a pivotal point in the movie but we really never get an explanation of who she is or why she is there. I also probably would have skipped on making Robot Bubs a female robot that had a male voice for most of the movie. I just thought this was a pretty crazy unneeded little touch that didn’t help the film. None of that was enough for me to lower the score here. This thing is a total blast.

SPACE SWEEPERS gets a strong 7 out of 7. I love sci-fi and this thing was loads of fun. 

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