Tsunami

CONTAINS SPOILERS! "Tsunami" is a TV-Movie produced by a commercial German TV-station, Pro7. Criticized in Germany for being shown less than a year after the tsunami-disaster in South Asia it was actually produced before the Christmas-Tsunami but not shown. Until now and what a pity. It's a disastrous disaster movie that doesn't avoid a single disaster-movie-cliché and violates several sciences (hydrodynamics, seismology, etc.) to create the completely unrealistic scenario of an explosion-triggered (guess by whom? YES by an greedy, evil corporation that ignored warnings by the scientists, how unique!) 50 m tsunami in the North Sea that is miraculously stopped by some silly, rather weak explosive devices. The film ignores nearly any known facts about tsunamis and shows us a single, huge wave that travels at perhaps 50 km/h. Tsunamis are never higher than 1-2m while still on Sea, they travel at jet-speed (900 km/h), they never come single and it's absolutely impossible to stop them with anything! Throw in cardboard-characters, REALLY bad acting (so bad it actually hurts), stupid subplots, annoying dialogue, terrible forced action-scenes stolen from e.g. "The Perfect Storm" and you get a really disastrous disaster-movie. Like real tsunamis, RUN and avoid at all cost.

Good special effects showing the tsunami, and after seeing this movie, that was about the only highlight of this show.

People in this movie are all business, and that's good - to an extent. After a while their dead pan mood starts to get to you. What a bunch of grouches.

I tried to like the movie, but couldn't. The one dimensionality of all the actors made this movie one dimensional as well.

There're technical levels of competence in each of the character, but when it comes to taking action, their ideas are really dumb. It was so dumb that at the end I couldn't care if they succeeded or not.

Better skip this one and look for other entertainment.

"Tsunami" is more than you normally can expect from a TV-Movie, with a small TV-Budget. Its 90 minutes fun, a very straight mainstream-plot and really good CGI. I found it better than many other TV-Disaster-Movies.

But what's more interesting: after the terrible Tsunami catastrophe in the Indian Ocean it was – of course - just a matter of time for a tsunami-movie dealing with this topic. But the film company had already finished the movie shortly before (for Pro7-Channel). After the real tsunami, the release of movie was held back from the channel for six months. Then released, in turned out to an incredible success concerning the TV-quotas – and deservedly so. In the web you can read, that "Tsunami", was realized by a young crew, just coming from the film academy. And the movie absolutely fulfilled my expectations of the genre. Its surprising, that the CGI-effects in some shots even look better than in "Perfect Storm" – although the CGI-Specialists had to get along with the daylight-setting, which is always a problem for realistic CGI.

I also loved, to see Dan van Husen again (a film-veteran from the "italo western") and my all time favorite bad guy. To sum up, "Tsunami" is absolutely well done for a TV-Project. Its great produced and internationally the most sold German TV-movie of all times.

The film is quite an acceptable German effort at emulating the Hollywood-dominated disaster film genre. While it's true that the characters' division into good and evil is rather obvious, this goes for most movies of that kind. And yes, we all know better about tsunamis since the South Asian one in December and we know it travels much faster and cannot be stopped. But hey, what about New York City being covered in ice within a few hours? Everyone loved that without thinking about whether this could really happen... So let's enjoy 90 minutes of suspense with acceptable, not-below-average acting, or just switch off the TV if we don't like it.

Alright, there is no denying this movie doesn't get top marks for credibility. The scientific background for the catastrophe does not convince, but why not simply sit down and say: "what would happen if..."? With that premise, the movie does work and can be fun to watch.

"Tsunami" wants us to imagine that Sylt island is threatened by a gigantic wave caused by an explosion. Responsible for the explosion is a company named Alpha Gas. The motivation of its managers to run such enormous risks while searching for a new energy source is poorly explained, I'd say, because they don't need success immediately but make a research for years to come. Probably realizing that, the script pushes the responsibility for the risky experiments over to Kramlick, leader of an oil-rig who wants to blackmail the company. Kramlick triggers the explosion and escapes, now the heroes have to chase him as well as find a way to stop the tsunami - within minutes! The music works fine and makes everything a bit bigger. The computer generated effects are not bad for TV standards. Finally, let's take a look on the actors. Kristian Kiehling as Jaan, the young hero who leads a quiet life with his relatives on Sylt island, but suddenly turns into an action hero handling pistols and machine guns easily. Fortunately Kiehling resists the temptation to pose and plays as realistic as possible under the circumstances. Someone else could have ruined this movie I'm sure. Anja Knauer as Svenja, the idealistic ecologist, gets a part typical for disaster movies: the character who knows what's going to happen - but the politicians won't believe her until it is almost too late. She does well and has more dialogues than others to explain her ideas which breathes some life into the story. Svenja is not good at communication, and her mistakes make her more believable. But towering over the inferno (couldn't resist the pun) is Dan van Husen as Kramlick, a villain with intensity who controls the screen every second he's on it.

"Tsunami" was an unlucky production from the start; its release had to be postponed after the real disaster in Asia. It makes mistakes, but also has its good moments. In my view, it's not the complete disaster some reviewers called it. Give it a break when it's repeated on TV.