Tunnel

In South Korea, the Kia Motors dealer Lee Jung-Soo (Jung-woo Ha) is driving home with a birthday cake to celebrate the anniversary of his daughter. While crossing a tunnel, it collapses and Lee is trapped inside. Using his cellphone, he is capable to communicate with the rescue team leader and with his wife. Now Lee must survive waiting for the rescue.

"Teo-neol", a.k.a. "The Tunnel", is a dramatic thriller about the rescue operation to save a man trapped inside a collapsed tunnel. The storyline is engaging, with good performances and melodramatic dialogs between Lee and his wife. This disaster movie shows a sharp criticism to politicians that wants to use tragedies to show up with the victims; to the press that disturbs people that is seriously working to sell "fresh" news to the audiences; and to the quality of public constructions in South Korea. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil):"O Túnel" ("The Tunnel")

Tunnel is a survival/catastrophy movie. And a good one.

In the first scene the movie sets the tone. It has slight comedic elements but mixed with a sad tone and the subtext is about responsibilitys. Who takes responsibility for what? The main character stops at a gas station and an old man works there who makes mistakes all the time. The owner had to pay 8000won because he filled diesel in one's car. After that the main character is trapped inside a collapsed tunnel. Who is responsible for that? The builders?

Unfortunately not. It's the state. In a democracy the people. The rescue teams, the workers and the tax payers. As the movie progresses the politicians, the business men and the press are trying to exploit the situation. The one responsible for the poorly constructed tunnel force the building of another one which means the stop of the rescue mission. But instead they should be the ones clearing up the mess.

Tunnel makes it very clear. The rich make more and more money and try to save money on the lives of middle class people. Their wages are exponentially higher compared to middle class peoples because they argumenting with higher responsibility for hundreds of jobs. But if they fail and hundreds of people loose their jobs it's the state, the welfare, the families who are responsible to take care of them.

Tunnel is a great movie about the unbalanced responsibility situation in the neoliberal world.

A husband and father is heading home with his daughter's birthday cake when a tunnel collapses trapping him inside his car.

Disaster movies are meant to be filled with tension and drama. This film did not fail in giving its viewers a healthy dose of both. While it is a bit drawn out, it is a decent movie that I found to be enjoyable. It is hard for me to review disaster movies simply because to have the right amount of tension you need a curiosity as to what might happen next. Knowing too much takes away from the anticipation about what might happen next. So, I'm just gonna be short and sweet about it by saying that it is a good film that had me confidently saying that had I been this fella, I would never have to work again because I would have sued the socks off of everybody.

The title says it all. Then I read its synopsis and right away I knew how much should I expect from it. Because this might be a fresh attempt in the Korean film, at least for the first time I'm seeing in a Korean film, but not from the world cinema. Yeah, I have seen plenty, and I'd liked most of them. But this film was much, much better than it had been rated in the internet. The story, the main event starts without wasting any time. There's no initial developments like intros. When the thriller-adventure parts commences, reveals everything you have to know.

Just over 2 hours long, the story frequently switches back and forth to where a man got trapped in a collapsed tunnel road and the outside where people and rescue team gathered. Like any other similar themed film, it borrowed a handful of clichés, but still you can witness the effort for the avoidance. Like if you see something or someone's crucial part come into play, usually you would predict what might happen to it in the later part of the story. Since those are unavoidable, they simply skipped in the final act as it is understandable and not to waste developing them to some extent.

So a man is fighting for his survival after a disaster strikes. But he got a cell phone signal buried under a deep mountain that I could not get. Anyway, he does make know his state of condition to the outside world. Soon they all rally to get him out. This film is not entirely a serious episode, despite the theme was. A little bit of satire. If that's how the film was intended or not, at least I had a couple of good laughs. Kind of reminded me 'Peepli (Live)', about the media circus in such situation. But that is the truth, what todays media have become, because of competition among themselves.

❝Don't be weak and say you'll die, just live.❞

The trapped man has to make sure about food and water to survive till the rescue team reaches him down which could take a week or more. Yeah, they kind of mention the recent Chile event which was made into the film, 'The 33'. His portion of the story is like the combination of '127 Hours', 'Buried' and of course that Chilean film. There are lots of things happen, you could say twists and turns. Kind of too much at some point, the way they added more contents to it, but decently it all worked out.

Meanwhile, on the outside world, not lags behind. It has its own set of characters and its circumstance events. Lots of fun and also highlights wrongs. Particularly like I said, the media and how politicians make use of such incident for publicity. And the final one about the construction firms and their shoddy works for profits. They have dug on these topics, but did not go deeper, because to keep it lighter and entertaining film than all about awareness.

All the way an engaging narrative. Means a long film, but very swiftly told story. Visually, it was a well made film, like everything's looked natural and believable. You could not differentiate the CGI/green screen work and the real objects of those disaster parts. But not the technical details such as drilling or the hollow space where he stays alive. When the narration progresses, it gets even worse, like you would say how could that even possible or just they wanted it that way to end the tale.

A small part of the end kind of skips, but that's good for the film than dragging it for another half an hour. The casting was good, they all performed well, but my favourite was Oh Dal-su. As usual, I loved his part, one of the finest supporting characters in the world cinema. It's not a great film, but good, and acceptable as what it is. In the end feels like worth it. So I decided to suggest it for those who are interested, but could not decide whether to go for it or not, and for the Korean film fans outside the Korea.

7.5/10

Another decent Korean offering, Tunnel is worth taking in if you're tired of Hollywood productions and you'd like to take in something different. Recommended.