Photo credit by Netflix

[Review] Space Sweepers

‘Space Sweepers’ is sweeping Netflix fans off their feet with its big budget, big names and big plot. That’s why it’s our Review of the week.

Space Sweepers

The Korean film ‘Space Sweepers’ was released on Netflix on 5 February 2021, which is only a couple of days ago at this point. The film was directed by Jo Sung-hee and was based on the WebToon with the same name. 

The story is about four misfits who are teaming up to earn some money because post-apocalyptic space isn’t cheap. They all have their own motivation for earning money, some more heartfelt than others. Earth is almost uninhabitable and space is being colonised. However, that’s only for the rich 5%. 

‘Space Sweepers’ is the term for the people who are collecting the roundabout debris in space to clear it up and sell it for parts. That’s where our team of loveable misfits comes in. 

Team of Misfits

Song Joong-ki plays the role of Tae-Ho. He used to be a very rich Commander of the Space Guards (a quite ruthless form of policing). Tae-ho had saved one of the babies during a mission and was raising her. He promised her that he’d be a good person, so he couldn’t perform his duties as Commander anymore. They fired him and he was homeless together with his adopted daughter. He lost her due to a tragic accident and has been looking for her body that’s been orbiting in space for years. It cost a lot of money to get a retrieval team, so he’s scraping up to get the funds together.

Next we have the role of Captain Jang, portrayed by Kim Tae-ri who you might know from ‘The Handmaiden’ or ‘Little Forest’. She’s a total rockstar and I love her. Captain Jang is a rather interesting character that in my opinion is a bit underused. Jang is a total genius who’s responsible for building some awesome weapons but we never really dive into her character a whole lot. She’s rough around the edges and hella smart. But I wish we’d seen more of her development. 

Jin Seon-Kyu plays the role of Tiger Park. He’s the mechanic on the team and he’s utterly adorable despite being a former drug king. The man can fight! You might know Jin Seon-Kyu from the movie ‘Extreme Job’

The last member of our team is the robot Bubs voiced by Yoo Hae-jin. The interesting thing about this performance is that the robot plays with our perception of gender. Due to its low pitched voice I automatically assumed it was a ‘boy’ robot. However, later on we realize that Bubs actually identifies as a girl as she’s looking into saving money so she can buy skin grafts to look the part. 

The team has its ups and downs. Having a spaceship is expensive. They come across a little girl Dorothy, played by Park Ye-rin, she is the lynchpin to their story. I don’t want to give too much away from the plot, so unfortunately I can’t go into depth. 

Verdict

I liked watching ‘Space Sweepers’, it was fun and entertaining and had enough momentum to keep me intrigued. However, I don’t think it was always clear what was what. There’s so much world building that it got lost a little bit sometimes. 

However, there’s so much plot there for a series that I do hope they take advantage of that. It’d be a shame to create an entire world like that and just leave it at a film. The characters also are all so interesting that it’d be a shame to lose that. 

I do think they could have trimmed the story down here and there. The one journalist was a bit on the nose to reveal our villain. I mean, you have a rich, seemingly out-of-touch leader who has enough power and money to run everything. Of course he’s the bad guy. 

There is one part that I didn’t like at all. I can’t go into depth without giving major spoilers here, but I’ll just say this. There’s an entire emotional rollercoaster and build-up for nothing. It literally doesn’t even last two minutes. That’s annoying and I wasn’t a fan. 

However, would I watch the series spin-off if it were to be released? Hell yeah! I love me some space adventures with a bunch of misfits. I also loved the multinational vibe to it. I heard so many different languages, saw so many different kinds of people. I dig it.

Go ahead and watch the trailer:

Ilse Van Den Heede
A writer with a slight coffee addiction and a tendency to find K-Indie gems in the YouTube rabbit hole.