Ashfall

There are kots of highlights for the near apocalyptic action genre lovers, but the story and plot are mostly undeveloped and pretty unhinged most of the time. the cataclysmic phases made on vfx and cgi are merely fine, but the way the human story is told its extremely mediocre and a very big nuclear wasted anti climax of a volcanic meltdown.

good production, average acting, terrible story and geopolitical disaster, thinks the grumpy old man, but its still a recommend

While the movie is pretty typical for a volcano disaster movie goes, there's a lot of things going on in it. The whole is mostly a group of solider trying to get uranium bomb to prevent another disaster. I don't know if it's possible to get it from North Korea and if it going to work at all. They try to cramp in a lot of things into it like the disaster scenes, the military action, and minor side plot that goes nowhere interesting. The disaster scenes are done pretty good with how much tension it goes to it and the CGI looks pretty decent for it. The characters aren't really that bad, but aren't that memorable. This is a decent watch.

Ashfall works where most other disaster film's do not because it mixes the basic premise is a way that's novel and exciting.

This might best be described as a disaster film that's also a military thriller, with a great human interest back story. In terms of pacing, it starts off slowly but quickly gains momentum, adding in layers of excitement and varied action, as it moves to its very emotional climax.

Acting is excellent with characters who have real depth and a story to tell. Its worth mentioning that some of the humour might seem a bit odd and a little slapstick, to European audiences. Its moderately reminiscent of the kind of humour that you find in Hong Kong action flicks, Its not to my taste but then this is a Korean film, pitched at Korean viewers.

My only real complaint with Ashfall is the story is a little too complex at times and deviates in different directions, a little too much. It can be hard to keep up with who's doing what to who and why.

That said, Ashfall is still a hell of a lot better than the basic disaster movies, that lazily reply on exposition and special effects, to carry them.

A well deserved 7/10 from me.

The goods: -CGI is decent most of the time. -Byung-Hun Lee is amazing as usual. -Destruction scene is great overall. -Character speaks better Mandarin than Hollywood movies. -Funny scenes are generally funny.

The bads: -Cramming in too many genres in one movie. -Trying to do too much at the same time, ended up doing nothing particularly good. -Editing is atrocious, there are at least 4 instances where it feels like it skipped 30 seconds or more of the movie for no reason. -Character makes illogical decisions. -Inconsistent tone. -STOP JOKING WHEN THE SCENE IS SUPPOSED TO BE SERIOUS. -Dong-seok Ma is criminally underused. -Physics makes little sense most of the time. -Inconsistent and forced character development. -Although given an urgency of time, but the pressure is not felt. Character has time to joke around. -Side characters are insignificant and can be discarded at any time. -Movie falls apart somewhere in act 2, and gets worse the longer it goes on.

Verdict: If you are not particularly critical about movies and love some korean blockbusters, go for it. Or else skip this and save some money. Not recommended overall.

I like a good disaster movie if it at least tries to make sense. I did have to watch it dubbed but the voice over actors did a great job of portraying the emotion of the Korean actors. I'd like to see more Korean movies get dubbed in English.