Project Silence
They were intended as a tool for good, cloned canids adapted and trained to locate survivors in disaster areas, rescue dogs with biomechanical implants to modify their behaviour and make them more responsive, but Project Silence was deemed a failure, the animals too difficult to control, yet rather than abandoning them and writing off the cost an attempt was made instead to turn them into war dogs able to seek and disable specific targets before that idea also ran aground.
A highly-placed governmental advisor, Cha Jung-won is driving his daughter to the airport outside Seoul before she leaves for university in Australia when a multi-car pileup in thick fog closes both sides of the Incheon Daegyo Expressway with multiple casualties; already an unfolding disaster, unbeknownst to them and the other trapped survivors, among the wrecks is an army truck which was conducting the last of the dogs to be destroyed, their handler, Doctor Yang, now struggling to bring the escaped animals under control.
Premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2023 and released domestically in South Korea shortly after, Project Silence (탈출: 프로젝트 사일런스, T’alch’ul: p’ŭrojekt’ŭ saillŏnsŭ, more literally Escape: Project Silence) is a disaster thriller directed by Kim Tae-gon from a script co-written with Park Joo-suk and Kim Yong-hwa, starring the late Lee Sun-kyun of Parasite as the ambitious but cold Cha Jung-won in one of his final roles.
Detached from his daughter and the needs of the electorate, commenting in a meeting to discuss how to proceed with an ongoing hostage situation that the ruling party only have a duty to those who voted for them, having refused to pay the gas station attendant Joe Park (Ju Ji-hoon) whom he believed was trying to con them he is now reliant on his pickup truck as the closest aid to clear a path while teenage Cha Kyung-min (Kim Su-an) tries to befriend an apparently friendly dog lost in the wreckage.
The fogbound conditions established early on, Project Silence is shot in a gloom so profound it is often difficult to determine what is happening, perhaps a mercy in that the killer dogs, primarily created digitally, pass muster for a film keen to position itself as a blockbuster epic, nor are the roster of characters which includes Kim Hee-Won as Doctor Yang, prone to panic rather than useful cooperation, and Park Ju-Hyun and Park Hee-von as a golfer and her unhelpful manager sufficiently interesting that the viewer desires their survival rather than entertaining deaths.
The army jamming communications so the public don’t become aware of Project Silence, other than Yang’s recall signal which strangely works, though not as intended, with the bridge in immediate but apparently intermittent danger of collapse following the collision of a helicopter into the suspension cables, the incompetence of the rescuers diminishes the sense of danger rather than demonstrating the precarious odds, and with second rate spectacle insufficient to overlook the shortcomings the most sympathetic character is Echo 9, mistreated leader of the pack.
Project Silence is available on 4K UHD, Blu-ray and DVD now
