FilmSnobReviews

Title: Okja
MPAA Rating: TV-MA
Director: Bong Joon Ho
Starring: Tilda Swinton, Paul Dano, Seo-Hyun Ahn
Runtime: 2 hrs

What It Is: In the near future food is scarce the Mirando company has crafted an animal know as a “Superpig”. These animals, which can get extremely large will grow over the next decade. Once they do they’ll be bred. One of these super pigs is Okja, bred by precocious young Mija (Ahn). Perhaps the largest of them all. As Mirando comes to pick up the now giant animal Mija does not want to let it go. Now with the help of an animal rights agency lead by Jay (Dano) they’ll try to rescue Okja from its impending doom.

What We Think: It’s a severely okay film. It’s a bit too heavy-handed in its message. Perhaps that’s Joon Ho’s fault as he also helped write the film. All of the acting is pretty good but Seo-Hyun Ahn is amazing. She so gets the character’s plight at such a young age. She gets that Mija is a girl whose best friend is being taken from her for the sole purpose of consumption. It so heavily hammers home it’s message of “the dangers of corporate greed” that it stumbles to tell the story out of the blocks.

Our Grade: C+, Overall I’m certainly disappointed with the film and Netflix has not helped itself with lackluster releases like You Get Me and their repeated fallaciating of Adam Sandler’s ego. This had a chance to be an amazing follow-up to Snowpiercer but instead, it was just a very meh film about consumption, animal rights and the power of friendship, to an extent. It’s a decent film and one that, it being on Netflix, I can recommend since it is an easy pickup watch. I just caution that you may never want to eat delicious bacon again. That’s not what happens to me but I could see some people reacting this way.