It's the year 2092, and earth is on its last leg, enviromentally, and has an expiration date - so the fortunate few who can afford it move to space stations orbiting earth that offer earthlike conditions provided by UTS, and UTS's super rich leader Sullivan (Richard Armitage) has planned to turn Mars into a new utopia (rather than trying to fix things on earth). Between the space stations, there's also lots of debris circling the earth, debris space sweepers are clearing for (meagre) profit. One such space sweeper outfit is the rag tag crew of the Victory, consisting of Captain Jang (Kim Tae-ri), pilot Tae-ho (Song Joong-Ki), who has a tendency for losing his shoes, strongman Tiger Park (Jin Seon-kyu), and their snappy robot Bubs. Now as successful as they are as sweepers, they have problems making their ends meet - or even pay for repairs on their ship -, and Tae-ho is hit especially hard by this as he tries (and fails) to raise enough money to look for his daughter. However, one day they find a stowaway on board, cute little Kot-nim (Park Ye-Rin), who conquers all their hearts by storm - but they find out the girl might actually be an android named Dorothy that might be of high value. So to get out of their financial difficulties, they try to sell her to the highest bidder, but their attempts always get them into more trouble, and eventually, UTS's own police is after them, and especially after the girl - which is when they have a run in with Karum (Nas Brown) and his Black Foxes, a gang deemed enviromental terrorists by UTS, who actually want to make earth inhabitable again, and little Kot-nim is the key to this as she is the host for nanobots who can restore life to pretty much anything, thus save our planet - which the UTS is dead-set against, as it would seriously cut into their profits from the Mars project, and thus they don't want only to get their hands on Kot-nim but also let an abandoned space station fall back on earth to cause ultimate disaster - and now it's up to the crew of the Victory to save the day, no matter whether or not they're equipped for it ...

Overall, Space Sweepers is a pretty enjoyable romp - though it's not that the movie goes out of its way to break new ground, instead takes inspiration from many a (Hollywood) sci-fi movie, and Star Wars comes to mind, but also Silent Running, as well as dozens of others. What's likeable here though is that the protagonists are really down-to-earth, a fallible bunch rather than heroes doomed to succeed. And one has to say, the effects work is really up to the task, even if some sequences are edited too quickly to really follow the action - which though is the problem of many big budget spectacle movies. On the downside though, at 2 hours 15 the film is a bit on the long side and becomes somewhat repetitive, while the plot, fun as it is at times, doesn't go out of its way to surprise the audience. But that all said, it still makes for a fun watch for sure.

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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