But eventually, the self-aware satellite figures out that the conversations it records are being used to target drone strikes in which innocent civilians are among the dead and wounded. Tormented, Sori decides to go AWOL.
Meanwhile, Hae-gwan (Lee Sung-min) is a middle-aged Korean man whose life has been shattered by the disappearance of his daughter. For over a decade, he has been wandering the country in search of her. Everyone he knows insists that she was killed in a tragic subway fire in Daegu, even though her body was never recovered (the subway fire is a real-life event from 2003). But Hae-gwan believes she ran away because of a fight they had on the last night he saw her.
Thus it is that Sori and Hae-gwan end up meeting on a deserted beach on the Korean coastline. Sori needs Hae-gwan’s help to move around on land, particularly given that the machine wants to go to the Middle East to help the victims of the drone strikes. Hae-gwan, for his part, realizes that Sori’s technology could help in finding his daughter.
The two become an unlikely team, searching across Korea and into past telephone records for a long-lost daughter. But unbeknownst to them, the NSA, NASA and Korean intelligence services are all searching desperately for the missing satellite.
Sori: Voice From the Heart is filled with surprises. One surprise is that a story so eccentric and outlandish should end up working so well. It’s true that sometimes, such as in the climactic sequence, the film spins out of control. Scenes involving US or Korean intelligence figures can also get silly at times.
Nonetheless, for all its shifts in tone, the emotions in this film feel real. That sense of authenticity comes both from the fact that the filmmakers are trying something new from a creative standpoint, and because director Lee Ho-jae proves willing to tackle difficult emotional issues, such as grief and loss.
Another surprise is that a film featuring a banged-up spy satellite as its co-star should make for such engaging drama. But it’s less surprising for those familiar with Lee Sung-min (Broken, Venus Talk), who after a long career as a supporting actor is now emerging into the spotlight.
Lee has tremendous range as an actor, including many villainous roles (The Piper, A Violent Prosecutor), but he seems most effective in roles like this, portraying an ordinary person dealing with ordinary (if very tragic) life experiences.
Other characters in the film are more colorful, from Lee Ha-nui’s role as a highly gifted, bilingual and compassionate intelligence operative, to the more broadly comic performance turned in by Lee Hee-jun as her superior. (Lee excels at playing slightly deranged figures, such as the scheming Hook in A Melody to Remember).
When you look at the pieces that make up Sori: Voice From the Heart, it seems inconceivable that they would all fit together as a coherent movie. But somehow, director Lee manages to keep it all from flying apart, and the result is a truly original and engaging story.