The Burning Sea, Another Norwegian Disaster

If working on oil platforms were safe and easy, it wouldn’t pay so well. However, you can’t blame the oil workers for not anticipating a disaster of this scale. That was the job of the screenwriters. Fortunately, Eelume Offshore Robotics really exists to serve the industry’s safety needs. In this case, a robotic engineer scrambles to save her lover from a deep watery grave in John Andreas Andersen’s The Burning Sea, which releases tomorrow in theaters and on-demand.

In the pseudo-documentary prologue, petroleum exec William Lie explains how dangerous Norway’s North Sea drilling platforms were when he started with the company in the 1970s. (The actor, Bjorn Floberg, looks a lot like Roger Corman, so you can pretend its really him, to make the movie even more fun.) We then fast-forward to contemporary times. The technology has been upgraded several times over, but it is still dangerous out there, especially when seismic shifts are detected in the oil fields.

Sofia is really starting to get serious about Stian, an admirably engaged single-father, who works two weeks on and two weeks off in the North Sea oil fields. Of course, he is on-duty when disaster strikes. Lie and the energy ministry agree to completely shut down all North Sea wells, but there is one platform experiencing serious technical difficulties. Naturally, Stian is the one who mans-up to fix it, but he ultimately gets trapped in the lower submersed service deck. To save him, Sophie goes rogues, taking her non-threatening sidekick Arthur and their serpentine robot with her.

Disaster movies are becoming a thing in Norway, thanks to the team behind Burning Sea. Andersen previously helmed The Quake and screenwriter Harald Rosenlow-Eeg co-wrote The Wave and its aforementioned sequel. This is a fresh slate of characters, but the peril to Norway is just as severe, thanks a perfect storm of natural catastrophes and man-made complications.

The platform setting and the Eelume robotics are all very cool and cinematic. Unfortunately, the characterization is just as formulaic as that of the Wavequake duology, but they are fleshed out less robustly. There is also an attempt to tack on a stronger environmental message, but it usually detracts from the stuff that works.

The Tunnel: The New Norwegian Disaster Movie

Readers of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy will always associate Norway with its fjords, but anyone who drives there is more likely to think of its tunnels. There are over 1,100 bored through the country’s mountains and since 2011, there have been significant fires in eight of them. That is according to the opening of titles of this film. Those tunnel incidents directly inspired Pål Øie’s The Tunnel, which releases this Friday in theaters and on VOD.

It is Christmas time, so a lot of the transportation safety workers are on holiday leave. (This being Norway, snow will also limit mobility.) Widowed Stein Berge thought he would be spending Christmas with his still grieving daughter Elise and possibly his eternally patient girlfriend Ingrid, but his boss calls him back when an accident closes down a long mountain tunnel. It is just as well, because it turns out Elise was aboard the Oslo express bus trapped about a mile inside.

Initially, the tunnel is just jammed, like the Suez Canal, but eventually the truck hauling highly combustible cargo starts leaking—and then it starts smoking. Soon, it is impossible to breath in the tunnel itself. Passengers must stay inside, recycling their air as they wait for help. Unfortunately, the side with the better rescue resources is still buried under snow, so Berge will go in from the other side, by himself, cowboy-style.

We’re no experts in environmental science, but Kjersti Helen Rasmussen’s screenplay feels pretty credible as it unfolds and the scarcity of breathable oxygen definitely escalates the tension. Admittedly, it gets pretty manipulative in the third act, but that is what disaster movies do.

Skyfire: A Chinese Disaster Movie from Simon West

If you are still disappointed you didn’t have a chance to invest in Jurassic Park with Sir Richard Attenborough, then maybe you can still get a piece of Jack Harris’s new resort hotel built around an active volcano. You better act fast, because this opportunity will not last long. Inevitably, hubris leads to spectacular tragedy in Simon West’s Chinese-produced Skyfire, which releases tomorrow on-demand.

When this island volcano last erupted, it was sudden and powerful. Young Li Xiao Meng barely survived, but her mother Sue Miller was consumed by the blast. Her scientist father Li Wen Tao was close enough to see it happen, but too far to save her. Twenty years later, Li has grown up to be a world class seismologist and the leader of Harris’s science advisory team. Of course, the highly leveraged developer refuses to listen to her when she warns him about the unusual readings her colleagues have detected.

Not one for alarmism, Harris sends his wife and business partner Wang Qian Wei to the volcano rim with a group of potential investors, because what could go wrong? Meanwhile, Li’s colleague Zhang Nan plans to propose to his girlfriend Dong Jia Hui, during a romantic getaway to her favorite underground swimming grotto. That sounds safe, right? Of course, everybody is in danger according to Li Wen Tao, who has seen enough to come drag his daughter off the island, whether she wants to leave or not. And then boom.

Considering the CCP’s concerted ongoing trade and soft-power campaign against Australia, it rather figures the Liverpool-born Jason Isaacs sports an over-the-top Aussie accent playing the Australian Harris. However, West deserves a lot of credit for largely curtailing the propaganda in Skyfire. In fact, you could argue Harris isn’t even a villain, but a tragically flawed hero, given his spectacular redemption scene.

West’s experience helming big Hollywood action movies (including Con Air, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, and The Expendables 2) is further reflected in the brisk tempo and some totally professional looking special effects sequences. Skyfire is not the first big budget Chinese disaster movie (that would probably the massively flawed Aftershock), but it is the most watchable so far. Still, every time the ground shakes, we expect the characters to look up from their cable cars to see brontosauruses striding by. Similarly, during the opening and closing credits, our mind’s ear keeps hearing Adele warbling “Skyfire!”

Despite Harris being the requisite Western caricature, Isaacs manages to humanize him to a surprising extent, in some key scenes. Likewise, Leslie Ma has some nice moments of grief and regret as the flawed Wang. Li Wen Tao is also a total stock character, but it is still entertaining to watch Wang Xueqi’s curt and crusty portrayal of the salty old scientist.

Exit: An Urban Cliffhanger

It is a little scary for  country, bordering a criminally insane regime, like South Korea, but there is the advantage of the resulting wide distribution of gas masks throughout Seoul. They will come in handy when a mysterious poison gas starts enveloping the city, but they only last for a short period. It turns out mountain climbing will also be a surprisingly useful skill when reaching high ground is of paramount priority. Yong-nam and Eui-joo look like they should be in a rom-com together, but they will be climbing for their lives in Lee Sang-geun’s Exit, which opens this Friday in New York.

Poor Yong-nam assumed he would have secured an impressive corporate job by this point. That is why he insisted on booking the banquet hall where Eui-joo works for his mother’s 70^th birthday bash. Instead, he is embarrassingly unemployed. Rather than showing off, he hopes to avoid the woman who responded to his overtures with the spirit-crushing “let’s just be friends.”

As fate would have it, Yong-nam met her at the local climbing club. That means they both have skills. When the gas starts rising, the Weinstein-ish hall manager naturally looses the key to the roof, thereby establishing the need for the first of many spectacularly dangerous climbs.

Exit is not exactly what you would call a subtle or complex film, but the effects and the height-scaling stunts are pretty impressive—to the point of inducing genuine vertigo. There is no question all the shimmying across ledges and leaping from rooftops is all very effective. Frankly, Exit probably has the best climbing scenes since Cliffhanger. Of course, the romantic subplot is totally formulaic, but Cho Jung-seok and Lim Yoon-A (a.k.a. Yoona of the K-pop band Girls Generation) make a disgustingly cute couple, so it still works anyway.

Yet, it turns out the family relationships are the most potent stuff in the film. Despite all the grief Yong-nam gets in the first act, he and his parents and siblings have genuine love and concern for each other. Honestly, if you want to see spectacular feats of daring committed on behalf of family loyalty, forget the Fast & Furious spin-off and check out Exit.

Granted, this film is not great art, but it has big heart. The two young leads also have massive charisma and they were well coached on the ropes, so to speak. Disaster movies are rarely this much “feel-good” fun, so fans of the genre should not miss it. Recommended for everyone who enjoys those hanging-from-your-fingertips scenes, Exit opens this Friday (8/9) in New York, at the AMC Empire and is already playing in Los Angeles, at the CGV Cinemas.

The Quake: Norway Takes Another Hit

You might think after their experiences in The Wave, Kristian Eikfjord and his family would have moved someplace flat, dry, and stable. Alas, they are still in the geological death trap that is Norway, but post-survival stress has ruptured their family unit. Eikfjord the geologist has become paranoid and anti-social, but that certainly does not mean he is wrong about the big shake he predicts in John Andreas Andersen’s sequel, The Quake (trailer here), which opens this Friday in Denver and San Francisco (where they know their earthquakes).

Eikfjord was a hero in The Wave, but he still has some serious PTSD to work through. His wife Idun Karlsen has been willing to give him time and space, but he is pushing it. She is particularly annoyed when Eikfjord cannot handle the scheduled visit from their eight-year-old-ish daughter, Julia (we’re not particularly impressed either). He forces himself back to Oslo to make it right, only to get sidetracked by the research papers of a recently deceased colleague who was even more paranoid. Of course, his prophetic warnings are only too accurate, but Eikfjord cannot convince his ultra-bureaucratic former colleague to pay attention.

Seriously, how many times can you look at ominous seismic charts and dismiss them as vibrations from construction sites? What are they building there anyway, mammoth particle accelerators? In downtown Oslo? You would think he would eventually say, “okay, let me take another look at this,” but no, not until it is too late.

That is the main problem with The Quake. Far too much time is devoted to Eikfjord howling in the wilderness and being a terrible parent. Anderson and screenwriters John Kåre Raake & Harold Rosenløw-Eeg keep their powder dry, saving the earthquake until the third act, but when it comes, the cataclysm is pretty impressive. In the previous film, they often teased viewers with potential dark tragedies, but always took the safe way out at the last minute. Not to be spoilery, but they do not always opt for the sentimental cop-out this time around.

Kristoffer Joner was rather blandly likable (in an aptly Scandinavian way) portraying Eikfjord in The Wave, but this time around, he is such a miserably sullen jerk, viewers will want to hit him over the head with a plywood plank to snap him out of it. As Karlsen, Ane Dahl Torp also seems much less interested in him and the film this time around, but her character has a right to be short on patience. On the other hand, Sondre, their now college-aged son played by Jonas Hoff Oftebro, is more responsible, proactive and just generally less annoying to spend time with, so at least one member of the family is maturing.

In the future, the Eikfjords have to figure out a way to avoid hotels during times of natural disaster. Regardless, the big catastrophic centerpiece scene is definitely memorable. Viewers who have not seen The Wave will still be able to navigate The Quake just fine. Frankly, the distributor is not marketing it as a sequel. It is just a showcase for buildings getting all shook up. Worth seeing (eventually) for its effects, but not so much for the drama, The Quake opens this Friday (12/14) at the Mayan Theatre in Denver and the Opera Plaza in San Francisco.

Tunnel: Surviving on Two Bottles of Water and a Birthday Cake

Politically connected J. Lloyd Haigh notoriously supplied rotten cables for the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge, but its design was so sound, it held up nonetheless. Unfortunately, that will not be the case for the shoddily constructed mountain underpass Lee Jung-soo is driving through. He is about to become the focus of a media feeding frenzy when his car in trapped beneath a cave-in. Current events clearly inform Kim Seong-hun’s Tunnel (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Lee, a rental-car wholesale dealer is headed home with his daughter’s birthday cake when the unthinkable happens. This is not a matter of a few tiles falling from the roof. It is a complete collapse. Of course, the authorities are caught flat-footed, but at least Dae-kyung, the on-the-ground operations guy is a strong improviser. He will do his best to rescue Lee, but he will have constant distractions from the swarming press and preening politicians. Naturally, the latter are all in for photo ops in the early days of the rescue (we hope), but they bail when it turns into a protracted campaign. Unfortunately, that puts Lee’s wife Se-hyun under tremendous pressure to give up on him.

Tunnel is not merely a claustrophobic survival story in the mold of Rodrigo Cortes’ Buried or the mudslide movie Detour. Kim opens the film up into a caustic indictment of the drive-by media and the negligent political establishment (the echoes of the Sewol Ferry sinking are hard to miss). Yet, it also happens to be a tightly executed ticking clock drama. We are keenly aware of the passage of time and Lee’s dwindling supplies of food and water, especially when he discovers Mi-na, a second survivor painfully pinned behind the wheel of her car.

As our lead, Ha Jung-woo is an effectively grounded, completely identifiable everyman. Like always, Oh Dal-su inspires instant confidence as Dae-kyung, like a Korean Tommy Lee Jones. Frankly, it is hard to say who is more emotionally affecting, Bae Doo-na as the maligned and harassed Se-hyun or Nam Ji-hyun as the slowly expiring Mi-na, but they both elevate Tunnel far beyond workaday disaster movies.

Ironically, there are some decent catastrophic special effects in Tunnel, but viewers are likely to lose sight of them, focusing on the human element instead. Still, as a follow-up to the rip-roaring corrupt cop thriller, A Hard Day, Lee proves he is a massive talent to be reckoned with in multiple genres. Tense, bracing, and sometimes infuriating (because it is so spot-on depicting the cravenness of the media and politicians), Tunnel is highly recommended for those who appreciate social commentary and the drama of extreme circumstances when it opens this Friday (8/26) in New York, at the AMC Empire.

The Wave: Norway Gets Disastrous

If you have read Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, you know this is all Slartbartfast’s fault. He to delight in designing Norway’s fjords. Unfortunately, they are ticking time-bombs. Eventually, a seismic shift will lead to a rock slide and that will inevitably cause a tidal wave. That day is now in Roar Uthaug’s The Wave (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

This is supposed to be the aptly-named geologist Kristian Eikfjord’s last day working for the Geiranger warning station, so you know the coast is toast. Just when he has the kids all packed up in the car, his Spidey sense starts tingling. His wife Idun was supposed to join them later after working through the tourist season at town’s luxury hotel, but when her husband gets sidetracked by a potential tsunami-style catastrophe (evidently, it happened before in 1934), she fixes up their teen-aged son Sondre (yes, he’s a guy) with a room instead. However, the geologist and their young daughter Julia opt to camp out in their former home for old times’ sake. As a result, the family will be separated when the mega-wave hits.

Of course, by the time the dreaded wave starts, it is already too late. Eikfjord the alarmist was ready to evacuate twelve hours ago, so it is a little hard to figure why he stuck around. Regardless, the good residents of Geiranger will only have ten minutes to reach high ground when the station finally sounds the alarm. No, that is really not enough time, especially when the moody Sondre is skateboarding in the basement with headphones cranked up to eleven.

When the actual wave comes in, Uthaug’s devastation is as good as anything Hollywood has produced. Not surprisingly, the aftermath will be just as perilous, with screenwriters John Kåre Raake and Harald Rosenløw-Eeg borrowing pages from Titanic and The Poseidon Adventure. Water has an inconvenient tendency to rise, doesn’t it? It general, The Wave is a slightly better than average disaster movie, but it seems like it will do something awesomely dark and unexpected at the end, only to cop out at the last moment, leaving the audience feeling manipulated.

Still, the fjord-bounded setting is spectacularly cinematic and the well-known Norwegian cast is uniformly competent and polished. As Kristian, Kristoffer Joner is a blandly likable absent-minded everyman. Both kids are similarly serviceable, but it is Ane Dahl Torp (so terrific in 1001 Grams) who best stands out as their down-to-earth and tenacious mother.

There aren’t any villains in The Wave, except maybe Mother Nature. Even Eikfjord’s most cautious colleague always seems reasonable (and eventually quite heroic). Isn’t that rather refreshingly Scandinavian? While The Wave never transcends the disaster genre, it observes the conventions in a highly watchable fashion. Recommended for slightly more intimate natural catastrophe films, like The Perfect Storm and Hereafter, The Wave opens this Friday (3/4) in New York, at the Landmark Sunshine.

DC K-Cinema: The Tower

It is a Christmas movie, just like Die Hard, but if you think the Nakatomi Plaza’s office party was a blast, you should see how they celebrate at the exclusive Tower Sky condo complex. Fire Captain Kang Young-ki and his men will also be invited. Kim Ji-hoon gets his Irwin Allen on in The Tower (trailer here), which screens this week as part of the Washington, DC Korean Cultural Center’s monthly K-Cinema series.

Tower Sky consists of two twin skyscrapers, making certain face-palmingly awkward parallels to the World Trade Center unavoidable. Perhaps the two towers were an attempt by screenwriters Kim Sang-don and Heo Jun-seok to differentiate the film from its transparent inspiration, The Towering Inferno. Regardless, it is something you just have to get past. Fortunately, Kim Ji-hoon takes his time, introducing us to the appealing central characters: Lee Dae-ho the operations manager for Tower Sky, his cherubic daughter Ha-na, and Seo Yoon-hee, the buildings’ food services director, whom he has long carried a torch.

Before the Christmas party, Lee warned the management too much water had been diverted from the sprinkler system. Seo subsequently alerted them the restaurants had insufficient ventilation. Someone also vaguely cautioned about possible updrafts when the helicopters were scheduled to drop the man-made snow. Of course, you can add these things together and get a massive skyscraper inferno, which is exactly what happens. Eventually, Lee will join forces with Kang, much like Paul Newman and Steve McQueen, in hopes of saving Ha-na and Seo. Unfortunately, the developer’s perverse policies and practices cause unnecessary complications at every turn.

Kim Ji-hoon sure can crash helicopters and blow-up buildings. The effects look great, even three years later (almost three decades in SFX time). The fire’s cause-and-effect details also seem pretty logical, at least during the heat of the film. Many of the buildings’ residents and staff are essentially stock characters, but this is the sort of film that can get away with that, for the sake of saving time. Obviously, the reason to see The Tower is to watch the firefighting dramatics, one hundred twenty stories in the air.

Still, Kim Sang-kyung, Son Ye-jin, and Jo Min-ah are all earnestly endearing as Lee, Seo, and Ha-na. They will make a ridiculously cute family if they can survive. On the plus side, the treatment of Lee Han-wi Elder Kim, the Evangelical lottery winner evolves in intriguing ways. Initially, he is portrayed in rather stereotypical terms, but his faith starts to give strength to the skeptical FD Sgt. Oh. Plus, Ahn Sung-ki adds his usual gravitas as the Yeoido station chief.

Less edifying are the depictions of the Fire Department Chief and Building Chairman, which are clearly intended to stoke class resentments. The idea that the Fire Department would have a “priority” rescue list is utterly laughable. No government bureaucrat would risk the potential media firestorm to save a few fat cats.

Regardless, The Tower is more massive than Backdraft when it comes to blazing effects. It also delivers plenty of heroism, in a way that will resonate for firefighter boosters. It stands up alongside Derek Kwok’s As the Lights Go Out, even though Sol Kyung-gu’s moody Kang is no match for Simon Yam, Hu Jun, or Nick Tse. With its family themes, it is a good Christmas programming choice, but the mortality rate of name characters will be way too high for little ones. Recommended for disaster movie fans, The Tower screens this coming Thursday (12/17) at the Korean Cultural Center in DC.

Aftershock: Eli Roth’s Chilean Vacation

When natural disasters strike, the social order often breaks down.  Nevertheless, one still suspects the aftermath of a devastating earthquake would be more “orderly” if that evil old villain Pinochet were still in charge.  Whatever the case, hedonism turns to anarchy in Nicolás López’s Aftershock (trailer here), produced by co-star Eli Roth, which opens this Friday in New York.

When Ariel calls his friend Gringo, it is meant with affection.  Not so much with Pollo.  The American tourist puts up with it though, because the privileged Pollo knows a lot of women.  Hooking up with three hot foreign ones, they head off for a weekend of partying in the coastal town of Valparaíso.  Monica, the responsible one (just like in Friends) is not so sure it is a good idea, but nobody wants to listen to her.

That night in the club, a massive quake hits.  Just making their way to the street is an ordeal. Suddenly, it is dog eat dog on the streets.  Pollo’s connections mean nothing to the escaped prisoners roaming the city, but he is the only one of the group who speaks Spanish.  Do not get too attached to any character as they scramble to survive.

Essentially, López applies Roth’s aesthetics to an Irwin Allen-style disaster movie, reveling in the resulting death and destruction.  While Aftershock is not appointed with the customary horror movie trappings, it definitely follows in the midnight movie tradition.  To López’s credit, he delivers exactly what he promises. Aside from Roth’s surprisingly likable Gringo, it is hard to expend much sympathy for characters as they charge into the meat-grinder, but the one-darned-thing-after-another mechanics of it all are a spectacle to behold.

Roth’s everyman Gringo nicely serves as the audience’s forthright entry point into the madness and fellow standout Nicolás Martinéz is appropriately loud and annoying as the entitled Pollo.  Andrea Osvárt also finds some resiliency in Monica, but the other women are more decorative than memorable. Aftershock also boasts a supposedly surprise cameo appearance from a teen star developing a more adult persona.  Though it is more or less an open secret, it is rather insubstantial gimmick and not the reason to see Aftershock.

If you want to see self-absorbed partiers pay for their sins, then Aftershock is your huckleberry.  Sure, there is plenty of collateral damage, but that is how Roth and López roll.  For those looking for a dose of bloody cinematic mayhem, Aftershock fits the bill.  Recommended for cult movie veterans, Aftershock opens this Friday (5/10) in New York.

Detour: There Will Be Mud

As if the taxes and wildfires were not bad enough, here is yet another reason to avoid California.  Trapped in his SUV, an ambitious advertising exec asks how the Golden State can have mudslides when there isn’t any water.  It is a fair question, but it is obviously rhetorical in William Dickerson’s claustrophobic survival drama, Detour (trailer here), which opens today in New York.

Jackson was on his way to a pitch meeting (sort of like that three hour cruise) when the picturesque stretch of coastal highway suddenly turned to mud.  Buried underneath who knows how much gunk, he has no cell service and a limited supply of food and water.  For temporary distractions (and exposition purposes) he can play videos on his smart phone, allowing viewers to meet his wife.  Evidently she is pregnant, but he did not receive the news with spectacular good cheer.

As the mud presses in on his vehicle’s structural integrity, Jackson improvises reinforcements.  He is actually pretty handy for an ad man.  In fact, Dickerson and co-writer Dwight Moody are quite faithful observing the constraints they impose on their hapless protagonist.  However, their flashbacks and delusional interludes are nakedly manipulative.

Despite its apparent simplicity, the one-man-against-the-elements genre (in the tradition of 127 Hours) is hard to pull off.  Staginess is obviously an inherent pitfall.  Still, Neil Hopkins soldiers through reasonably well.  While he is forced to mutter to himself quite a bit, he largely sells the messages he leaves on his iPhone, perhaps for posterity.  Unfortunately, the sequences outside the mud-trap are flat and awkward.  Odder still, it is difficult to tell whether the final scene is meant to be inspiring, ironic, or ambiguous, which is clearly an execution problem.

Detour is far from classic, but it is certainly presentable by b-movie standards.  Nonetheless, it is tough to justify at full Manhattan ticket prices, particularly with Aftershock, the Eli Roth-penned Chilean disaster smack-down, waiting in the wings.  At least worth falling into eventually on cable, Detour opens today (3/29) in New York at the Cinema Village (and is now available on VOD platforms).