Jung_E: She Works Hard for the Money for Her Kid's Operation

As devoted mothers go, you'd be hard-pressed to find one as committed to the well-being of her child as Jung_E (Kim Hyun-joo) in the somewhat philosophically inclined sci-fi movie that bears her name. After spending her young daughter's formative years fighting the inevitable robot takeover of Planet Earth in order to raise money for her kid's cancer treatments, she then spends a posthumous second-life as an eternally cloneable brain inserted into a metal humanoid body that is the basis for that same child's military experiments. That her adult daughter (Kang Soo-yeon) has grown up to run a pilot program for the military industrial complex proves a disturbing way to honor her mother's memory, considering the work is all about mom being being pummelled and tortured in a recurringly fatal combat re-enactment. To reference the James Bond theme sung by Madonna, this noble lady survives only to "die another day."

The movie documenting mom's inability to become the ultimate war tool raises timely questions about immortality, genetic inheritance, human commodification, and, most of all, mankind's downward slide. But personally, I had a tough time admiring a woman who could make it her life's work watching her mother get beat up. I also didn't see the benefit in saving one of thousands of replicate brains so the android encasement could forge out its own existence... where and to what end? Yeon Sang-ho's action-packed flick should be commended for not devolving into pure video game nonsense (which is basically where it starts) but given his previous zombie classic Train to Busan, I wish he'd pushed his Woman vs. Machine narrative a little further than "one mimeographed mother has finally broken free of the System." That's good. It just could've been great.