Lee Hae Jun and Kim Byung Seo (director)
(studio)
15 (certificate)
128 (length)
06 December 2020 (released)
05 November 2020
A casual day for bomb disposal expert Jo In-chang (Ha Jung Woo) - who even takes his PPE off while his colleague is working on a live bomb - is disrupted by a massive volcano eruption that scientists predict will destroy the entire Korean peninsula if it the magma pressure in one of the four chambers can’t be relieved.
The solution? A task force sneaks into North Korea, with orders to steal six nuclear warheads, plant them down a disused mine detonate them thus draining the magma from the chamber. This with the participation of a North Korean agent Lee Joon-pyeong (Lee Byung Hun) who has a number of other motives and ideas, Jo’s wife is pregnant, interference from various individuals and foreign governments, scientists with fragile egos and identity problems.
The writing room must have been ablaze when they were stringing these ideas together. It’s a rollercoaster that draws on disaster films, nods towards war and espionage with covert cross border military operations, double dealing agents and international political machinations. It’s a sprawling film that gives the impression that no ideas were rejected during the writing process. But it doesn’t look at all cluttered and it actually works very well.
Writers and directors Lee Hae Jun and Kim Byung Seo film has effects that are on a par with anything that you will see in a Marvel film with the collapsing cities being very impressive and one outstanding sequence of a car chase over a collapsing bridge during an eruption with black dust failing all around.
It nary drags during its 2 hours plus running time as we are spun from one situation to another and back again. It skilfully interplays with the characters and their stories - the cast (who must have been totally aware of the ludicrousness of the plot) play it pretty straight when there could have been a temptation to ham it up. The comedy is broad though there are some surprisingly touching moments within the mayhem.
Ashfall is playing as part of the London Korean Film Festival and scheduled to be presented at the Genesis Cinema on 6 December.
