Hopeless, the first film by director Kim Chang-hoon, was presented in the Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes Film Festival. A thriller set in the heart of a gang of motorcycle thieves in a small, impoverished South Korean town.
The filmmaker recounts the initiatory journey of a young man ready to do anything to escape his violent daily life. To do so, he joins an even more violent gang. Hopeless is generous with fight scenes, but its first act drags on and on. It takes a while to get to the heart of the script. This first film shows promise, but suffers from serious pacing problems throughout. Concerns with the protagonist's family, long scenes given over to non-essential secondary characters, and a third act that doesn't know where to place its end point... The script is perhaps a little too rich, and fails to focus on the essentials.
This hopeless world, where you can only express yourself with your fists, is fascinating enough. Hopeless is a film noir that explores the consequences of the desperate choices characters are willing to make to escape reality. Director Kim Chang-hoon brilliantly depicts the oppressive atmosphere and tensions between the protagonists, but he will certainly learn to manage his device better in his next films, which we're looking forward to discovering all the same.
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