Review

This is a frustrating movie from the director of the fun zombie action movie Train to Busan. It starts off with some fast-paced action where a lone female fighter faces an onslaught of highly sophisticated mechanical robots. Completely outgunned, the solution against the big heavy metal robots was hand-to-hand combat! There are so many things wrong in this initial sequence – although they can be brushed aside in the scene's final reveal – it foreshadows the problems with the rest of the movie.

Everything in the movie is completely overly designed. The aesthetics of the war-torn post-apocalyptic world has thrown every conceivable futuristic style and idea into the mix that you're just left with an utter mess. The final chase sequence with the “police” is just super silly.

The characters on show for the rest of the movie are frustratingly comical. Eye-wateringly bad. There is a change in style from a science-fiction action movie to a melodramatic drama and neither are that well fleshed out.

HOWEVER, the idea behind the opening sequence is interesting. The concept of data use for military and other purposes is explored in a really neat way. There are a lot of small touches throughout the second act which has an emotional core and relates to these concepts, I just wish they weren't wrapped in an irritatingly poor stupid action movie.

Blade Runner set the standard for this type of movie over forty years ago – from both world-building and exploring ideas about what it means to be human – and should be a palate cleanser for this movie.