Earth has been devastated by drastic climate change, and humankind migrates to new shelters in outer space. The civil war that occurs there continues on for decades, and Zhongyi becomes a legendary mercenary and military strategist with countless victories to her name.
But after one failed mission puts her in a vegetative state, a military AI development company attempts to create the ultimate combat warrior by cloning her brain. Jung_E is a movie from director of Train to Busan, Sang-ho Yeon, and he's shown how he can take one genre and infuse it with a ton of emotional drama to create a lasting and captivating story.
However, Jung_E is not the movie I thought it was going to be. From the trailer, it looks like an action sci-fi where an android with a successful soldier's brain is being used to create more almost unstoppable soldiers. Unfortunately, that's not what this is at all. No doubt there is the element that focuses on using the brain of a soldier to then create more super soldiers.
But this, it focuses so much more on a family drama full of longing and loss. Now we do get some action sequences, but not to the degree you may expect. The CGI is also pretty good in a lot of scenes.
There's this animal-looking robot thingy on wheels, and it's deadly and fast. And most of the time it looks convincing with good texturing and shading as it moves through the environments. But there are some other moments that involve some robots that they feel like they're more out of a video game cut scene rather than a movie with a special effects budget.
There's also the emotional angle that's revealed as the story goes along. Relationship conflicts add internal turmoil, and those then guide the actions of our main players. The problem, though, is that none of it ultimately works.
And it's not because the story and the execution were different than what I was expecting. I'm able to pivot pretty quickly, and I did once I realized this wasn't going to be an action film. But there's very little emotion to what we actually watch.
And there's some very strange direction decisions when it comes to the characters. The main character of Jung_E is stoic, but that kind of makes sense, seeing as how she is really just a collection of memories and ideas that an AI brain is trying to put all together to form a new complete mind. But there's a scientist played by actor Kang Soo-Yeon who is pretty emotionless and really hard to connect with.
While the story explains how she may exhibit anger or even sadness due to her background, what we get is just a blank wall. Her eyes and facial expressions, kind of destroys any emotional connection the story hoped to establish with her. And I never felt any ties with her, even when the narrative reveals key elements that give huge insight into her past.
She was a cold stranger the whole way through. And the huge bummer with this for the real world is that the actor Kang Soo-Yeon passed away in 2022 from a brain hemorrhage. So this could be her last piece of work.
And then there's a supporting character who plays the director of the AI company is due to so mismatched for the tone of the story. The character is immature, constantly cracking jokes at inopportune times. And then to make matters worse, the jokes are cringey and stupid.
So he becomes a major annoyance through most of what we watch. And then there are actions that he performs later in the movie that kind of contradict his carefree and stupid mannerisms. So all of a sudden he's in tune and serious with everything that's going on around him.
It just didn't fit with what had been established previously. And for a movie that's only 98 minutes long, this drug on dragged on. It took way too long to tell.
And it was incredibly boring, too. The quest for why the AI company is working so hard to develop the brain map is repetitive, and we're not given any real reason to care if they succeed or fail. And the lack of action makes the back and forth discussions about what the experiments mean feel lackluster, pointless, and then dull.
And the story feels very incomplete, like chunks of the plot are missing. We still have a beginning, middle, and end, but the necessary details that would make this an engaging watch, they're just not present. There's even a point where the story tries to change direction and create a sort of social commentary surrounding the use of AI and the necessity of soldiers versus everyday needs.
And this also could have been a deeper and robust conversation, but it's only mentioned briefly, even though it has larger ramifications within the storytelling.
So what's my take in Jung_E?
My sincere take on the movie, Zhongyi is just a mess of a movie. It begins like it's going to be a sci-fi action thriller and then transitions to a family drama that forgot to include any emotional connections to the characters.
The special effects are passable, but they're not enough to make this interesting. The acting is stoic or mismatched in tone, leaving characters who all feel like out-of-place strangers in a story that doesn't understand its assignment. I was really looking forward to this, especially considering that the director created one of the most emotionally surprising zombie movies ever.
But this one, it's not worth the time at all. And for that, I give Zhongyi one and a half out of five stars.