Project Silence (2023)

Project Silence (2023) You could say that this film is a very American spectacle… but South Korean!I n any case, you can tell that the director, Kim Tae-Gon, watched a lot of films in this genre before creating his own. He also wrote the film with Parc Joo-Suk and Kim Yong-Hwa. Can we say that this film is a closed-door affair? In any case, almost the entire film takes place on a gigantic bridge in the process of collapsing.

The budget was £18.5 billion. At Cannes, the film was presented on 21 May 2023. In South Korea, it had to wait until 12 July 2024. If you don’t have the right information, the dates of the film’s creation could be wrong. If ever, this film has nothing to do with Carole Hailey’s book ‘The Silence Project’. Basically, it is revealed that the dogs were originally developed to be much more effective rescue dogs, by making them react to human voices, so that they could come and rescue victims. However, the South Korean army, with the support of the US and many European governments, decided to turn the dogs into powerful attack dogs to hunt down and eliminate terrorists instead, giving birth to Project Silence. So… it’s up to you whether you find it original or not, far-fetched or not!The actors are decent, even if not all of them are used to their full potential.

Lee Sun-Kyun, in the role of Cha Jung-Won, is a father and presidential aide who uncovers a pack of lies. His daughter is played by Kim Su-An, who is very convincing. The president is played by Kim Tae-Woo, in a cold, manipulative role with a view to success. Ju Ji-Hoon as Joe Park made me laugh out loud. His character lightened up the heavy moments. Kim Hee-Won, in the role of Dr Yang, the researcher, is a bit of a villain who isn’t too bad. He is the one who has also been manipulated and is being kept secret by someone more powerful than him. Park Ju-Hyun plays the golf champion and is one of the most sympathetic and genuine of the group. We won’t beat about the bush and quickly admit that this isn’t great cinema!

The dogs are CGI, sometimes not too bad, sometimes grotesque. The story only revolves around one thing, killer dogs, so it’s not an ultra-complex film. It is classified under Thriller Catastrophe. A disaster film is a film genre in which the subject and main plot is an impending or ongoing disaster. These can include natural disasters, accidents, military/terrorist attacks or global catastrophes such as a pandemic. This is a sub-genre of the action film. These films usually feature some degree of build-up, the disaster itself, and sometimes the aftermath, usually from the point of view of specific individual characters or their families or depicting the survival tactics of different people. But here, these details aren’t very extensive.

You can have a good entertaining time, but it’s also hard to dive in when you don’t believe it for a second. This film won’t go down in the annals of cinema, even though it did generate a lot of effort. It’s one of those ‘quickly seen, quickly forgotten’ films.