Space Sweepers

 A Korean space opera now running on Netflix, Space Sweepers is a high production, and not that happy, story.

And with high production, rest assured the visuals will stun you.  But does that distract from the movie itself?

When near the end of the 21st century the Earth is dying from contamination, an organisation known as the UST work on a way to cure this.  Partly by housing a percentage of the population in space stations, but also by looking for ways to terraform Mars into a new home, led by 152 year old James Sullivan, genetic modified super plants are meant to be the way to this.

When the Black Foxes, a terrorist organisation, losses a mega weapon robot known as Dorothy, disguised as a young girl, she is salvaged by the crew of the salvage sweeper (a sort of interstellar junkhaulers) Seungri.  Here, while they are hesitant at first, she starts to bond with the crew, first and foremost with former druglord and death sentence convicted Tiger Park, the ships engineer.

Tae-Ho, the ship pilot and in need of money to sat farewell to his deceased daughter, makes plans with the rest of the crew (apart from park also the robot Bubs and captain Jang) to sell her back to the Black Foxes.  However, this is foiled by the Space Guard as they listened in, and when they reunite her with her father. the Space Guard barges in.  Seeing how they slaughter innocents, including her father, they decide to find out more and learn of a plan of Sullivan to kill millions on Earth instead of spending resources to help them.

They devise a plan to take the bomb, to which Dorothy is the integral key, to safe distance and save Dorothy's life in the process, and a chase begins...

This is a good, if dark, movie for sure.  Including an epic space battle with the law enforcement ships on the one hand, and the garbage collectors on the one hand.  The finale is a suprise twist indeed, and you are really going to like this film.

It seems Asian cinema is making far more awesome films these years then Hollywood... and also, no reboot, no reimaginations and no whotnot's, but original films and stories, a great relief!