The Tower

If your looking for a good action pack, dramatic movies that keeps you on the edge of your seat, then this the right movie for you. Once you get past the character building, setting the mood, at the beginning the movie is magic.

I found it really good, always love watching foreign movies, and it made me cry so much at the end!!

This film is basically a remake of The Towering Inferno post 9-11. There's a twin tower building full of people that catches fire by accident. There's no water available on the critical floors so the fire spreads. There are lots of people trapped inside the building and rescuers doing their best to save them.

Really, you know what you're going to get, there's no surprises, and it all comes down to how well executed the action sequences are and whether we care about the people involved in the tragedy. For me, this film works. Granted it's Korean and subtitles take some of the tension away as your eyes are flicking to the bottom of the screen to see what's bring said. But, this film really works as a 21st Century disaster film.

There's lots of big action sequences, big fires, explosions, burning bodies, falling bodies, tons of special effects. It's all exciting stuff in a very PG sort of way.

Taking advantage of knowledge gained in the 9-11 disaster, we see steel frameworks buckling, people tacking pleas to find their loved ones on nearby walls, burning debris falling from the top of the building; everything that happens to modern buildings when they burn.

My biggest criticism of the film is that there are too many characters. The film takes 30 minutes before the fire starts and in that time we meet the maintenance manager and his child, the restaurant manager, the head chef, the incompetent chef, the incompetent chef's girlfriend, the maintenance manager's friend, the rookie fireman, the fireman sergeant, the work obsessed fireman, the lottery winner, the Christian, the mother of a college student, the college student, the building manager, the building owner, the snooty woman and her dog, and so on and so on. Really, there are just too many. Cutting the number down and shortening the introduction would have improved this film a lot, allowing us to care more for fewer characters.

Whilst most of the film is deadly serious, there is some light relief provided to make the film more watchable - two hours of relentless disaster is just too depressing. In particular, the character of the fireman sergeant is likable, comical, but still very serious in his actions. My favourite moment comes when he prays for, and gets, a tsunami, dozens of floors up the building.

I can't imagine this film being made in America, post 9-11, and many Americans may find it too distressing to watch but, as a reboot of the disaster film genre, it's great success.

THE TOWER is nothing more than a modern-day remake of the Irwin Allen disaster classic THE TOWERING INFERNO, updating the storyline with modern technology and modern effects but dealing with exactly the same type of logistical intrigue and scared survivors drama. It's slightly melodramatic, as is the case with a lot of Asian cinema, but it's also highly efficient with it. It may not be up there with the best of the genre, but it's better than the comparable likes of AFTERSHOCK and THE SINKING OF JAPAN.

The narrative takes on a familiar construction with the first half hour building the characters before letting rip with a major accident, then working its way through a series of alternative disaster scenarios. Survivors are fried, dropped, blown up and put into various perilous situations, and it's all handled with more than a modicum of efficiency by director Kim Ji-hoon. It's also well paced and technically efficient, with decent CGI adding to the peril and some well-placed comic relief offsetting the more dramatic moments.

Is THE TOWER original? Not a jot. Is it as good as the original? Not by a long shot. Is it entertaining? Oh yes. It may be no classic, but as modern disaster cinema goes this is one of the better ones you'll find out there.

Is this a copy of Tower Inferno, most definitely.

Is worse?. Actually no, it is better.

The Tower Inferno was one of my favorites disaster movies and not because of the movie itself but for the topic at hand. I always had an eerie feeling of big tower buildings as much as planes. Human made things in such an impressive scale can fail and knowing technology all to well, this is a disaster scenery i'm usually more scared of.

The Tower inferno was fun but tedious, The Tower is fun and exciting.

IT is actually quite a shock, because the movie was incredible well directed, the first act was all too happy and did a good job in presenting the characters, the incident take its time to happen and this is a very good thing because it built suspense.

But...

By the time it happens, this movie is a thrill ride, it will not stop and it will keep you guessing what else is gonna fail, the scenery was breathtaking, the effects are incredible good, this is a big production and Koreans now show they can manage to do big movies like Hollywood, and as much fun as them.

What I most like about this one is the emphasis on the fireman, I always found that profession to be the most honorable of all and this is very well displayed through the movie, they are respected, honored and put into a incredible good light through the movie.

In contrast to American movies, the hero is not saving the day to be a hero, he does not wave flags like Americans, they just do their jobs, it is amazing how good this was captured on screen.

The main leads all do their job very well and although there are some sentimental parts like in the majority of Korean movies, they are handled all too well and they just work.

This movie is amazing, it has all the ingredients of the disaster movies, the director really did a superb job and I am sure you will have lots of fun with it.

It is a copy of The Tower Inferno?, well, yes ! for the most part... SO WHAT?

Americans do tons of re-re-remakes over and over again and nobody complains, it's not fair to do this to the Koreans, they managed to do a better Tower Inferno, by a long margin.

Keep up the good work! Now I am incredible excited about the next production coming out of Korean Soil !

Love it!