How to describe this guy.......he's like a rogue Spielberg with liberal helpings of Ken Russell/Paul Verhoven over-the-top madness.....especially with Verhoven's penchant for angry satire of government/corporate cruelty and idiocy. And, oh yes, he's a hell of a fantasist, deploying the technical wizardy of CGI not only to dazzle, but put across his worldview with sledgehammer force.....
But unlike Spielberg, he's no smooth craftsman......his films raggedly swing back and forth from heartfelt pathos to breathtaking action and violence.....he has no interest in or takes no time to suck up or stroke his audience......though filled with unforgettable monsters, these movies won't sell any action figures or stuffed animals.....(though Bong unfortunately, to his detriment, encourages some of his actors to indulge in cartoonish performances....)
Like his breakout, monster-horror 2006 hit "The Host", "Okja" throws together a fantastic creature and a little girl......only this time in a far more benevolent pairing.
To us, anyway, the movie seems modeled on the 1949 "Mighty Joe Young", in which innocent teen Terry Moore's lovable pet giant gorilla gets whisked away to the U.S., to be abused, humiliated and exploited by a showbiz impresario.
"Okja"s version of Terry Moore is a young Korean mountaintop villager (Seo-Hyun Ahn) whose grandfather has signed up to raise and nurture one of a slew of genetically oversized creatures meant to feed the world as new improved pork product.....(they resemble a jumbo cross of pig, hippo and in behavior, an overweight overly affectionate hairless dog).
Ahn and her grandfather's plus-sized, deftly computer generated 'Okja', as you correctly guessed, have bonded with endearing love and loyalty in the great tradition of all girl-and-her-pet movies......and inevitably, Okja and his fellow test tube porkers are reclaimed and siezed for social media publicity and eventual slaughter by their corporate creators and various simpering minions.
Here's where you might find the movie problematic...... in its jarring, weirdly abrasive depiction of its villains......with Tilda Swinton's take-no-prisoners lunatic portrayal of the corporation's rapacious twin sisters and Jake Gyllenhaal's downright embarrassing turn as a frenzied TV reality show veterinarian. Swinton, who already embraced the crazy in Bong's previous haves-versus-have-nots sci fi parable "Snowpiercer", knows how to precision calibrate this kind of goony acting.....poor Gyllenhaal, however, doesn't have that skill set and he suffers an actor's worst nightmare, made to look like a desperate, gasping, foolish amateur way out of his depth. We honestly ached for him as he tore through his scenes like they were 'Saturday Night Live' skits.
When not devoted to Swinton and Gyllenhaal's exaggerated ravings, the movie feverishly concentrates on elaborate, eye-popping action set pieces involving the implacable Ahn rescuing Okja from the Swinton's army of security goons, aided and abetted in these efforts by a determined crew of animal rights activists led by Paul Dano (as intense a true believer here as he was playing Daniel Day Lewis's nemesis in "There Will Be Blood")
As we warned you before, all this stuff may sound like Spielberg territory, but director Bong follows his own heart here......it may touch your heart from time to time, but that might come more from casual coincidence rather than calculated design......this director's way more interested in wringing corporate necks than wringing tears out of viewers. (And you can forget about kid-friendly.....Swinton and her odious crew drop F-bombs with R-rated abandon....)
BQ recommends you adopt 'Okja' for a couple of hours.....you don't find too many quirky, iconoclastic directors of special effects epics......most of those guys live and die by their weekend box office receipts.....Jooh-ho Bong does fantasy his way, take it or leave it.....with its all in tonal shifts and questionable acting, we'd still take this big Piggie to market.....3 & 1/2 stars (*** 1/2)
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