Review by
Ren Zelen
Directed by: Byung-seo Kim, Hae-jun Lee
Starring: Ha Jung-woo, Lee Byung-hun, Ma Dong-seok, Jeon Hye-jin, Bae Suzy
The South Korean film industry is known for crafting quiet, poignant
dramas about family and society, but give the Koreans any genre and
they’re usually guaranteed to step it up a notch.
In the case of Ashfall the genre is the ‘disaster movie’.
The South Korean film industry has had several previous disaster flicks -
2009’s Haeundae saw a tsunami destroy Busan; 2016’s
Pandora imagined a Fukushima-like nuclear catastrophe and
2019’s Exit depicted a toxic gas cloud engulfing Seoul.
However, none of these movies were on such an epic scale as
Ashfall (a.k.a. 'Baekdusan'). Directors
Byung-seo Kim and Hae-jun Lee have assembled a formidable
cast to save the country from a volcanic Armageddon.
The film opens as the world watches news reports covering the
denuclearisation of North Korea, but within the first few minutes we are
treated to a nail-biting action scene as a massive earthquake shakes the
Korean peninsula. Mt. Baekdu, the volcano straddling the border between
North Korea and China, erupts, and cities are collapsing around their
panicking populations.
As ash fills the skies, scientists calculate that Mt. Baekdu’s eruptions
will increase in severity and ultimately destroy half of the Korean
peninsula. The eruption is an event which Korean-American geologist Robert
Kang (Ma Dong-seok, in a role miles away from his burly-tough-guy
image) has been predicting for several years. He is just about to leave
Korea and return to the US when he is detained by the South Korean
President’s secretary Jeon Yoo-kyung (Jeon Hye-jin) to advise and
assist the government.
Kang suggests that their only option is to detonate a nuclear warhead in
one of the conveniently placed mines around Baekdu to release the
volcano’s building pressure and so save the peninsula. But there is a
small problem - Baekdu is on the far side of North Korea along the Chinese
border, making intervention tricky. Also, South Korea doesn’t have any
nuclear weapons, but, again conveniently, North Korea has their remaining
nuclear warheads stored in a secret location, ready to be handed over to
America.
Korean film star Ha Jung-woo plays Captain Jo In-chang, a South
Korean Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) technician. His pregnant wife
Ji-young is played by K-pop star Bae Suzy. One day away from his
departure to await the birth of his first child, Captain Jo In-chang is
drafted in with his team to extract the core from the warheads and
transport them to the designated mine.
However, they need the help of North Korean soldier and double agent Ri
Joon-pyeong (Lee Byung-hun), currently being held in prison over
the border. He is the contact who knows the location of the secret bunker
where the warheads are being kept.
Meanwhile, hoping to meet In-chang later on, his pregnant wife Ji-yeong
starts on a journey across Seoul to the port where the American army have
promised transportation to safety for her and her husband. She is unaware
of his dangerous secret mission in North Korea.
The assignment does not get off to a good start for Captain Jo In-chang.
Ash from the volcano clogs the engines of the plane carrying the special
forces team tasked with breaking agent Ri Joon-pyeong out of jail. When
their plane tragically crashes, it leaves Captain Jo and his team of
unprepared technicians as the only ones on site able to take on the
dangerous task of extracting Ri from prison. They’ve heard that Ri is a
tough cookie, what they don’t know is that he has his own agenda.
While the Koreans are getting by just fine using only rubber bullets,
their lives are put in jeopardy when the American troops get involved. The
US soldiers barge in with hi-tech military equipment and begin to shoot
live ammo at anything that moves. The situation is further complicated
when Chinese gangsters arrive, hoping to get the nuclear devices for
themselves.
Captain Jo and Agent Ri are the latest rendition of a reluctant
South-North partnership overcoming their antagonism to help Korea from
becoming the victim of foreign interference, a theme that occurs in many
Korean movies, perhaps reflecting the country’s actual underlying
anxieties. It also brings together two of South Korea’s most illustrious
film stars.
Even with a run time of 2 hrs and 8 mins, Ashfall is never
boring. It is chock full of exciting, well-choreographed action set
pieces, and the pace never drags. Even the ‘down’ times are punctuated
with wry humour, maintaining the entertainment factor. In a plot
containing earthquakes, volcanos, north-south-east-west political
tensions, international gangsters and family drama, it may actually be
trying to throw too much at us, but having said that, it’s never difficult
to follow what’s going on.
The film certainly looks like a Hollywood blockbuster, complete with a
host of famous names and utilising all the usual tropes, yet it retains a
distinctively Korean flavour with its geopolitical backdrop and national
preoccupations.
There has been a certain amount of symbiosis between Western and Asian
cinema since the 1980s, and in that spirit Ashfall owes much
to US disaster flicks such as 2012, Deep Impact,
San Andreas
and Earthquake, but it has the good grace not to take itself too seriously. However, it
does still tell us a little about the love-hate relationship between North
and South Korea, as embodied in its principle characters, with Mount
Baekdu, which is sacred to both Koreas, presented here as a unifying
principle.
Interestingly, there are two directors attached to Ashfall -
Lee Hae-jun and Kim Byung-seo, who worked together before as writer and
director on 2014’s My Dictator. Here they have created an adrenaline-fuelled disaster epic with
outstanding special effects, but also with humour and heart.
None of the participants here are superhuman; often they’re not even
particularly heroic. Instead they’re silly, fallible, and unsure of
themselves, but they muddle along and do their best, and they do it for
family and also for the common good. This makes them all the more engaging
and sympathetic. Like the sweets they like to munch throughout their
ordeal, they understand that life is sweet, but also sour.
Ashfall was scheduled to play the
London Korean Film Festival prior to cinema closures. A UK/ROI release has
yet to be announced.
