OKJA Review

OKJA

I made a mistake, let us just start there. So I thought, “its the school holidays and I have my son and I’ve got to watch a movie to review, so let’s check out Netflix and see what we can find for us as a family”
Well, there wasn’t much we hadn’t already seen and most of the newer films were not really appropriate for a young kid to watch, as we scrolled further through the movie list we came across OKJA, this seemed promising I thought and from the trailer my son (who is close to 9 years old) my partner and I decided that this would be a good movie to watch together.

Okja is rated M and there is no indication in the trailer nor in the write up on Netflix that this might not be suitable for young ones after all, however it wasn’t until the first “Fuck” that this became apparent.

Okja is a 2017 South Korean and American action-adventure film directed by Bong Joon-ho, who also directed Snowpiercer alongside a heap of other titles.
In Okja a young South Korean girl named Mija (Ahn Seo-hyun) raises a genticly enginered giant pig like creature (Okja) that has been given to her grand father Heebong (Byun Hee-bong) along with nine other specially chosen farmers from around the world in order to grow this “super pig” as large as possible over 10 years, the biggest would win a competition laid out by the company “Mirando” that cruley enginered the creation of the pig, spearheaded by the companies ceo Lucy Mirando (Tilda Swinton) in a reponse to the increasing population of the world and the declining resources of the earth.

So the ten years is up and an eccentric/disturbed zoologist and TV personality Johnny Wilcox, (Jake Gyllenhaal) who is the celebrity frontman for the company, makes his way to meet Okja and eventually through a little bit of deception and mistrust, takes Okja to Seoul in preparation for transportation to America.
This is when Mija starts on her quest to free the pig and return to the quiet mountainside home that she and her grandfather live.
However things get messy and an Animal Rights group called the “Animal Liberation Front” get involved led by Jay (Paul Dano), from there the whole movie then becomes a weird moral discussion on the breeding of animals for food and the conditions they live until they become said food.

Now this was all going well, there were a few “fucks” and “shits” here and there i wasnt too

concerned, my son is mature for his age and has heard launguage being thrown around in different cirumstances, he has only sworn twice around me and both times were a complete accident where he said words that remotly sounded like a curse word, so I wasnt to concerned with the now and then bad launguage, BUT!!!… during the later parts of the film when Okja is back in America and being taken to the slaughter house to be processed, well that went a whole level more.

Fields and fields of “Super pigs” shoulder to shoulder with no grass or room to move, being lead one by one up ramps into the big menacing factory. You are shown the pigs walking along the killing floor and hear the noise of the bolt gun as its used on each pig, it was just before this point when I noticed my son was sobbing.
I stopped the movie and sat him up and I asked if he wanted to continue watching, his reply was “I feel so sorry for all those animals”, I stopped and thought for a minute about how this scene really didn’t affect me at all, but it did so my son, how we become so desensitized that we can move past just about anything because we can justify it within ourselves.
He wanted to continue on but I skipped past the last scenes of the slaughterhouse to just as Okja comes back into the scene.

Now this movie I enjoyed and apart from the slaughterhouse my son and partner did too, the reason I enjoyed it I think was because its such a departure from what we see film wise now, its either superheroes, lovers, horrors or shitty remakes of great films, I enjoyed the adventure and the change of pace but overall, this movie actually made me stop and think for about 15 minutes, it made me stop and think about our food, our future and the morals of the world.
Most of all it made me think about how desensitized people are going to be when my son reaches my age.

I would watch this movie again, I don’t suggest it as a family movie with a young one, but maybe a 12+, it’s not a great masterpiece but it is an enjoyable adventure that may stir some thoughts… or just make you hungry.

Director: Bong Joon-ho

Cast:
Ahn Seo-hyun as Mija,
Tilda Swinton as Lucy Mirando,
Swinton also plays Nancy Mirando, Lucy’s twin sister,
Paul Dano as Jay,
Jake Gyllenhaal as Johnny Wilcox,
Byun Hee-bong as Heebong,
Steven Yeun as K, an animal-rights activist and ALF member
Lily Collins as Red, an animal-rights activist and ALF member.
Yoon Je-moon as Mundo Park
Shirley Henderson as Jennifer, Lucy’s assistant.
Daniel Henshall as Blond, animal-rights activist, ALF member
Devon Bostick as Silver, animal-rights activist, ALF member
Choi Woo-shik as Kim Woo-shik, a young driver for the Mirando Corporation.
Giancarlo Esposito as Frank Dawson, an associate with the Mirando Corporation.
Choi Hee-seo as Interpreter

Verdict : mmmmmm Bacon Sandwhich

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