She may not even be a girl at all, but a robot a robot who may not be a robot at all, but a bomb. Then, as they tear apart a crashed shuttle, the crew discovers 7-year-old Kang Kot-nim (Park Ye-rin), a girl with a secret. All that is needed to restore Tae-ho’s ward is more money than he will ever see in his life, no matter how much junk he and his mates clear. The rest are left to perish on the desertified planet. This is the same outfit that is making Mars ready for settlement, but only for an elite 5 per cent of Earth’s population. The near-magical mega-corp UTS can resurrect her using her DNA signature. As a child soldier, culling troublemakers in orbit, he once saved the life of a little girl, adopted her, was ostracised for it, hit the skids and lost his charge in a catastrophic orbital collision. Song is the latest in a long line of South Korean actors whose utter commitment and lack of ego can bring the sketchiest script to life (think Choi Min-sik in revenge tragedy Oldboy, or Gong Yoo in zombie masterpiece Train to Busan). Tae-ho is played by Song Joong-ki, who also starred in Jo’s romantic smash hit A Werewolf Boy (2012).

They are a predictable assortment: a feisty robot with detachable feet a heavily armed yet disarmingly gamine captain a gnarly but lovable engineer with a past. In Jo Sung-hee’s new movie Space Sweepers, he is someone who is most alone in a crowd – that is to say, among his crewmates on the spaceship Victory.

TAE-HO is a sweeper-up of other people’s orbital junk, a mudlark in space scavenging anything of value.

Space opera movies