Okja is not only the successor to Bong Joon-ho's excellent 2014 film Snowpiercer, but also Netflix's first stab at the festival circuit. The streaming service had made stabs at art films previously with Beasts of No Nation as well as numerous Sundance acquisitions earlier this year, but Okja's position in the Competition for Cannes's Palme d'Or was a big enough deal that its very inclusion proved controversial.
It's an absurd controversy, frankly, as a film is a film regardless of where it's viewed, and Bong's reputation is enough to have earned that Competition slot on its own. Indeed, Okja's environmentalist moralizing suits it to film festival awards just as well as its exciting spectacle suits it for widespread popularity, and it's no surprise that many were immediately won over. Unfortunately, as exciting, funny, and technically accomplished as Okja is, it's all brought down by heavy-handed, one-sided moralizing which at times borders on manipulative.
Mija (An Seo-Hyun) is the daughter of a South Korean farmer who was given a genetically engineered "super pig" to raise for a competition by the unpopular Mirando corporation. Over the years, Mija has grown fond enough of this pig, now named Okja, that when Mirando arrives to reclaim the pig, Mija teams up with the Animal Liberation Front to save Okja from Mirando's American slaughterhouses. Meanwhile, new Mirando CEO Lucy Mirando (Tilda Swinton) attempts to reform the company's public image.
As a social satire, Okja is hardly thought-provoking. The unethical practices of the meat industry have been documented on film countless times over the years, and the film has almost nothing new to say about them. Unless you're woefully uninformed on the subject, it's unlikely that the film will change your opinion, especially when it's so blatantly didactic. Did you know that animals are often mistreated in corporate facilities? Did you know that corporate marketing can often be dishonest? Wait, you did? Then you're not gonna get much out of this.
The film's tactics are often blatantly manipulative, starting with the treacly relationship between Mija and Okja, and then in the latter half expanding to include footage of Mirando doing horrific things to Okja and eventually a wretched ending which dials the emotional manipulation up to eleven. While the scenes of Mija and Okja playing on their farm are endearing, the film coasts heavily on it to further its message, and while it depicts Mirando using their reunion as marketing, the way that relationship is employed in the film is no less emotionally pandering, and only heightens the feeling of preachiness and thematic simplicity.
Furthermore, there's only so much sympathy than can be afforded for the obnoxious characters withing the film's version of the Animal Liberation Front. While the film occasionally offers some criticism of them, especially early on when they're just as strange and threatening as the Mirando goons, it ultimately settles on strongly sympathizing with them, even though it does nothing to address oddities such as their cult-like obsession with tradition. Even if you wholly agree with the organization, the characters within it are still thinly-sketched. Only two have character arcs, and those arcs are underdeveloped and abrupt.
Speaking of which, the entire subplot surrounding Lucy Mirando needed more time to cook. It brings up ideas of nepotism, corporate insincerity, and the contradictions of ethical capitalism, but it does very little with any of those ideas, and for the most part, the film strikes an awkward middle-ground between making her seem relatively well-intentioned while still villainizing her. Some of her misguided attempts at image control do land some satirical points, but not much else does, and the film's attempts to compare her to her more cruel sister come across like a first draft.
Comedically, Okja is a mixed bag. Both Swinton and Jake Gyllenhaal as TV scientist Dr. Johnny give broad, exaggerated performances, and while their conviction is admirable and their material is often funny, both are largely distracting in their roles, especially Gyllenhaal, whose performance borders on cartoonish. Otherwise, the film's jokes mostly land, with a handful of disappointing poop jokes counterbalanced by amusing character beats and the film's more successful satirical elements. Aside from Johnny and Paul Dano's ALF leader Jay, the characters are at least amusing, and Mija remains endearing even when the film uses her to score emotional points.
But the two qualities which really save Okja are inseperable: the excellent special effects on the titular pig, and the thrilling action scenes. The pig is impressively animated and boasts a surprising amount of physical presence, to the extent that the film's best action sequence revolves around her running through Seoul and busting up a mall. Bong somehow manages to make the actors and sets feel like they're interacting with this computer-generated beast, and the action around her is clearly shot and exhilaratingly choreographed. Even those action scenes without the pig are thrilling to behold, and while there are fewer of them in the second half, their mere presence elevates the material.
Because of that action, Okja is frequently entertaining, but its heavy-handed moralizing keeps getting in the way. It's not without good points, especially as it regards the brutal treatment of livestock by corporations, but the few points which the film chooses to focus on offer little that hasn't been said by countless other films, and the film's methods of conveying its methods are often manipulative and pandering. Adjust up a point or two if you're ignorant about the meat industry or already agree with the film's message, as the film is a lot of fun once you take the message out of it, but for those who already know much of this information, Okja is spectacular but messy and unchallenging, and its preaching threatens to grate.
6/10
+ Great CGI pig
+ Has good intentions and some decent points
+ Spectacular action scenes
- Scattershot themes rarely coalesce
- Hammy performances from English-speaking actors
- Heavy-handed in its moralizing
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