This was a cute but okay movie. The little girl is adorable. It was also a movie I wasn't expecting, I thought it would a fun space romp, but it was only partially that. It had the usual corporate shenanigans and a basic apology. It was also oddly bloodless, where there should have been some blood. All that to say it was fine for what it was, lol.

Despite my love of kdrama, my familiarity with Korean movies, other than Bong Joon Ho's work, is very narrow and shallow -- is casting of established and known Western actors like Richard Armitage common or is this still a rarity?

I would also dispute the characterization of Firefly as having a strong element of toxic masculinity, Joss Whedon's apparently well-deserved fall from grace notwithstanding, I always found that show did a good job of puncturing Mal's cowboy self-satisfaction and poking fun of Cobb's gung-ho nonsense was the character's raison d'etre.

Thank you @laica for the nice SPACE SWEEPERS review and thank you Netflix for streaming this film. It is a d**n shame that we were not able to watch this on the big screen as a summer ‘blockbuster’.
I have not watched it yet but I am sorry that the early returns are rather negative. I am glad @laica you enjoyed the film and I am looking forward to watching it soon. I may offer another comment later.

O/T. I recall going to the AMC 25 on 42nd St in Manhattan one Saturday in August of 2019 and enjoying the Korean ‘disaster action comedy’ film EXIT with Jo Jung-suk and Im Yoon-ah. It was great. It was a summer blockbuster (in Korea) but I left the theater feeling like it was one in the USA also.

Thank you for the review @laica. Although I can’t technically find fault on the acting or production, you can tell they really tried their best, the story line/plot was not as strong as I would have liked. And I would preferred if the sweepers all died at the end. I didn’t feel a great emotional connection to any of them (except Tiger Park—his scenes with the little girl hit all the right notes) and their deaths would have meant more to the story. (And more in line with traditional Asian storytelling as well, perhaps?)

Here's a thing..

movie scared me because one particular aspect is a very very very real possibility

living on Mars and making earth the dumping ground. Rich moving out, poor left to survive in toxic waste..

**************

Also, people should start entertaining the idea that instead of searching for advanced aliens, we may truly be the first complex living beings in the universe..

eons later.. earthlings might just be the first ancestors of inter galactic world

I really enjoyed this movie. With the way movie distribution usually works it’s unlikely I would have to able to see this in a cinema. I got a lot of Firefly and Farscape vibes from it.

It wasn't the greatest movie but it was pretty entertaining. I think they missed the way they introduced the main characters. It was a little bit confusing : the mafia guy was the machinery guy, the engineer was the captain and the gun girl the perfect soldat was the pilot.

I really loved to hear all these languages, it was really fun. Maybe because I'm Swiss and I used to hear a lot of different languages, it didn't bother me.

For a first korean movie, they did pretty well for the CGI. It never disturbed me from the story. I was pretty impressed.

I agree. This would've been better in theatres. Honestly, I didn't have any expectations when I watched this which helped me be pleasantly surprised on how good it is. Its not perfect but its a fun watch nonetheless. I like Kim Tae Ri's character, Captain Jang, the most. Tiger Park and Dorothy are just adorbs together. I also appreciated the social commentary in what is wrong in that world and hopefully we can take action now. I love those ear-piece translator thingies and was a brilliant and practical solution since the movie have an international cast, imo.

I enjoyed the movie. I’ll just get that out of the way before I completely dump on a couple things that bugged me a whole bunch.

***SPOILERS for anyone who hasn’t seen it***

Oof, if she could just save them from that far away in the first place, why did they make the “sacrifice” of flying away? They kept doing that old trope of “Oh he/she didn’t ACTUALLY die,” and it started to wear pretty thin for me. It would have been a far superior ending if they did in fact sacrifice to save the world (And I think it would have given extra meaning to their ship name). And the villain was pretty generic/one note. The performances from the non korean main cast was also hit or miss.

As for the things I did like: Visuals were great! CG was good, and the world felt grimy and lived in, but still super colorful. The story, while not groundbreaking, still hit me right in the feels a couple times. I’ve long been a proponent of some of the best origin stories being something akin to “Deep regret/loss caused by the protagonist, who spends their life making up for it,” and this one hit me just right. I liked the whole crew actually, even if they weren’t all fleshed out to the same degree.

Solid movie, worth a watch, but not something I’m going to go out and rave about to others.

Popcorn movie is a great way to describe this. It was the perfect Friday night watch - after a long week, sit back and be entertained. I also really enjoyed hearing all the languages flying about and thought that was a nice touch. And it was definitely unsettling to see the earth in 2092 precisely because it doesn't feel implausible.

The crew's chemistry was fun, they were adorable with Kot-nim, and I am totally a sucker for ragtag confederations, so loved seeing the other sweepers, too.

CGI was well-done, story was perhaps a bit predictable but had some good twists, but my biggest complaint is really that it could have easily been 30 minutes shorter. Would have loved to see it in the theater, but it was a treat to just sit back and be swashbuckled for a bit!

This film would be Korean summer blockbuster... but unfortunately, it was canceled its theatrical film release only due to Covid-19 but thankfully, Netflix saved us from too much risks or dangers of getting the longest postponement ever did. The Korean hub of Netflix did a great job and at last, I hope that Netflix and other Korean legal streaming websites will surpass the cinemas by this decade onwards.

For Space Sweepers, it was like a combination of Star Wars and Star Trek into one big Korean first-ever space opera film that fits to this epical tale.

@laica Thank you for this review. I liked the film in spite of some of the flaws. As you mentioned, I was reminded of the series Firefly, because it centers around a band of misfits who are trying to carve an existence in a hostile galaxy. My favorite character was Bubs :)

I actually really enjoyed this movie. Yes it was out there and silly in some respects, but i had a smile on my face while i was watching it. In these dark times any joy we can get its priceless.

I liked it a lot! I could see the faillings - the somewhat predictable plot, the hammy baddie, the weird accents (we honestly couldn't understand the Spanish bits, those weren't subtitled on our Netflix version), but the lovable rat pack crew, the underlying comments on class and sustainability and the cool production design won me over.
Anyway, the premise strongly reminded me of a kids' comic we all love here at home, Space Dumplins by Craig Thomson - class comments, access to living areas, even the job of space Sweepers, it's all in this book from 2015 😉

I liked it. Cute is the word I would use to describe it.
I had a great time while watching, the only thing is that it may be a too long. I've always said that unless you're Gone with the wind, you shouldn't need more that 1:45 minutes to tell a story.
Anyway, I loved how every character spoke their own language. It was fun listening to SJK speaking Spanish. Not that bad, not that bad (I even have hopes about his Italian, although Spanish phonetics are more similar to Korean than Italian's).
I was a bit disappointed with Richard Armitage who is one of my favourite British actors... why do I always have the feeling when watching a Korean drama or movie that non Korean actors are doing a terrible job? I really love Richard Armitage, and he's just so laughable as a villain here... not even his diction was good (and gosh, his "Are you coming home with me?" in North and South is probably one of my favourite lines in TV history).

The flow of the movie was rushed but was inevitable in the short time. The kid element was fantastic in all scenes but to overall world was to random. The reason the bad guy was bad was told but was a really lame excuse. The disease he had was never explained, perhaps it was nanites too but there was no explanation of how they became unruly whenever he got angry. For as stellar a crew with their various abilities and how special and fast their ship was they never really presented as superior. I mean its that far in the future and they are still manipulating big levers and steam valves etc??? If the captain was a genius why is her little 100 piece hidden rifle thing the only weapon she could bring to bear? Even if that was it....that far in the future why not have it remote mounted and computer controlled for faster target acquisition and her not having to bungee herself to the tailgate to fire the thing???

This is a really good and nice summer popcorn fun movie, if we had been able to make it to the cinemas.

But I still liked it,it reminds one of Guardian of the Galaxy, but with a Korean take on it, and really novel that all wear an earpiece to understand others speaking other languages. I wish such creation is available now.

But great job to the Korean cast and production as this movie needed alot of crew production to drive up its value.Thanks to the Flix for bringing this to our region.

Surely it is an entertaining movie, and I do enjoy it. But I don't think the issues it mentioned have enough time to discuss. Matt Damon's Elysium also have the richest 1% living in space colony (and Elysium only have one, Space Sweepershave quite a lot of modules it almost like a metropolis), as well orbital garbage, social inequality, environmental disasters, let alone all 4 main characters have a pretty complicated background (the main antagonist? Not so much--too bad you found The Hobbit Trilogy's Richard Armitage to play that role, and it's pretty much wasted him ... The Director is way to ambitious, so everything the movie touches are so shallow. I guess Space Sweepers have an opportunity to go big on all these, issues, plots, characters ... and the end product is like a lost opportunity.

While I found the movie entertaining, I was a bit disappointed they didn't make a part 1 and 2. The movie introduced some really interesting themes I wished they would've had more time to explore. I've also long been a fan of Richard Armitage (he vastly stole my heart in the Robin Hood series!) and would have like to seen more of his character.

@laica you should watch Warewolf Boy if you want to see unkept Song Joong Ki.

I personally like that film vey much because he had so little lines so he had to act more with his body language

What a great movie. I really enjoyed it.