Robot Sound |
South Korea • 2016 • 117m •
  • Directed by: Ho-jae Lee. • Starring: Soo-bin Chae, Dean Dawson, Won-hae Kim, Ha-nui Lee, Hee-Joon Lee, Sung-min Lee, Howard Neilson-Sewell..   A robotic satellite with artificial intelligence crashlands in Korea and contains clues for a father who is desperately searching for his missing daughter.
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Review:
The movie is both a comedy and a tragedy and I found this particular mix to be quite unsettling. The comedic elements were typical South Korean fare; all interactions exaggerated with huge, gawping takes, over-the-top conflicts occurring at the top of everyone's lungs, and so on. A ham-fisted pseudo-slapstick combination of Laurel and Hardy with Three Stooges sauce.
The tragedy, on the other hand, was heart crushing and eminently believable. Genuinely one of the saddest and most moving representations of parental grief I can recall seeing in decades. Underscoring the abject misery of the tragedy in this movie is the fact that most of what is represented of it is tied to historical fact. The represented train fire did occur (arson) within the timeframe and exact place depicted, dozens of people were killed, and some of the victims were so destroyed they were difficult to identify and at least one could not be identified. You can read about the event here: https:en.wikipedia.orgwikiDaegu_subway_fire
The plot line in ROBOT SOUND is bizarre. An artificially intelligent United States spycommunication satellite has come to detest it's participation in human conflict. Having been utilized to route the communications that led to the harming of a little girl, it decides to bring itself down out of orbit and attempt to track down the little girl and try to help her.
Meanwhile back at the ranch, a bereaved father continues his quest, now 10 years in, to find his "missing" daughter. The world has accepted her death a decade previously, but he can't accept it because her body was never found, so he believes she must still be alive somehow.
The thinnest of leads takes the father to a remote South Korean island. While there, the artificially intelligent satellite (who the father eventually dubs "Sori") crashes into the water almost in the lap of the grieving father.
As one might expect, with such similar motivations, the AI satellite and the grieving father join forces. They strike a deal wherein the satelliterobot is to help the father first, and then he'll do whatever it takes to help the satellite on its way on its quest. Certainly having a spy satellite with virtually unlimited communications abilities, not to mention the unrestrained ability to nose into any communications that it so desires, couldn't be a bad thing on such a search.
"Hilarity ensues". Only, to my tastes, it doesn't. "Funny" sequences intermixed with our gradually growing understanding of exactly what happened between the grieving father and the dead daughter was just upsetting.
Of course, given the truth of the situation, no daughter is found during the movie. Nor will she ever be found. The best that can happen, and it does happen in the movie, is that the grieving father eventually comes to accept the truth. Watching the father's agony as he returns to the subway station where the tragedy happened, dark and empty, to make this transition is all but unbearable. And the viewer knows in the back of their mind that this tragedy actually happened in real life, dozens of people died and dozens more were injured. We are watching this one man come to terms with his personal, horrendous reality, but there were hundreds of people who had to go through this in real life because of what really happened in this place.
Given the circumstances, the movie has as happy an ending as possible with the AI going off to try to find the little girl it wants to help while staying in touch with the grieving father who is now on track to try to move on with his life.
This movie contains some incredibly poignant themes. How deeply a parent can love a child; how trying so desperately hard to do the right thing by your child can go unpredictably and horribly wrong; how deeply ingrained cultural imperatives can complicate the parent- child relationship; how impossible it seems to find the right balance between protecting and controlling your child and letting them make the mistakes one fears will harm the child for life; how apparently simple choicesmistakes can haunt a parent for life. And so much more.
It is, of course, only my opinion, but had this movie been structured differently without the silly comedy and irrelevant AI element, but simply told the story of the grieving father with some other vehicle to help him make his transition, this would have been a legendary movie.
Review by generala from the Internet Movie Database.
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