“Hope” Poster
Ten years is a long time to wait for anything, but as a fan of director Na Hong-jin, that patience has finally paid off in 2026 with the release of Hope. Notwithstanding his 2023 short film Faith (made to promote the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra) and foray into producing with the 2021 Korea-Thailand co-production The Medium, the last time Hong-jin sat in the director’s chair for a feature length production was the 2016 horror masterpiece The Wailing. Hope sees him reunite with the star of The Wailing in the form of Hwang Jung-min (I, The Executioner, 12.12: The Day), here playing the police chief of Hope Harbor, a small coastal village not far from the 38th parallel.
It’s never implicitly stated, however Hope appears to be set at some point in the late 70’s or early 80’s, with billboards visible encouraging the public to report spies, and a surplus of heavy artillery likely leftover from the Korean War still readily accessible. In fact the way characters frequently turn up armed to the teeth with everything from assault rifles to rocket launchers becomes a running joke, as Jung-min’s somewhat naïve police chief constantly questions where the weapons have come from, seemingly clueless to what’s been under his nose the whole time. In case it wasn’t clear already, Hong-jin’s latest sees the director at his most playful, opting to forego the dark tone that defined his classics like The Chaser and The Yellow Sea in favour of a rollicking action flick.
This becomes apparent from the opening moments, where Jung-min arrives at the scene of a dead cow sprawled across a country road, its presence called in by his second cousin, played by Zo In-sung (Humint, Smugglers). Mauled by a much larger creature, In-sung and his hunting buddies weave a tale of a tiger that travels down from Siberia every year, through North Korea and into the South, however once Jung-min drives into the town itself, it becomes Continue reading
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