Tunnel (2016)

A man is on his way home when the poorly constructed tunnel he is driving through collapses, leaving him trapped.

Director:

Seong-hun Kim

Writer:

Seong-hun Kim (as Seong-hoon Kim)

Stars:

Jung-woo Ha, Doona Bae, Dal-su Oh

3 wins & 14 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Jung-woo Ha	...	Lee Jung-Soo
Doona Bae	...	Se-Hyun
Dal-su Oh	...	Dae-Kyung
Jeong-geun Sin	...	Captain Kang
Ji-Hyun Nam	...	Mi-Na
Hyun-Chul Cho	...	Young guy in rescue team
Hae-sook Kim	...	Minister (as Hae-suk Kim)
Seung-mok Yoo	...	Reporter Jo
Hyuk-kwon Park	...	Government official
Jin-woo Park	...	Government aide
Cheol-min Lee	...	Captain of drilling team
Sung-chun Han	...	Drone technician
Seung-hun Kim	...	Public hearing moderator (as Seung-Hoon Kim)
Soo-jung Ye	...	Old mother
Jin Yong-Ok	...	construction worker A

Storyline

A MAN'S DESPERATE STRUGGLE TO SURVIVE Jung-su, an ordinary car dealer, is on his way home with a birthday cake for his daughter. As he drives into a tunnel an unbelievable thing happens; the tunnel collapses on him. Minutes later, he realizes that he is completely caught in between the debris. Outside, this breaking news creates media frenzy. An emergency response team is immediately organized to rescue him and tries to keep the media under control. As it becomes a national concern, the government promises full support for the rescue. Days pass without any success and people start to lose hope or interest in rescuing him. Hard decisions are forced on his family while no one knows whether Jung-su is dead or alive.

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Plot Keywords:

rescue team | trapped | trapped in a tunnel | tunnel collapse | dog | 

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Taglines:

When everything collapses, only hope remains.

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Genres:

Action | Drama

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Certificate:

TV-14

Details

Official Sites:

Official site [Japan]

Country:

South Korea

Language:

Korean

Release Date:

26 August 2016 (USA)

Also Known As:

The Tunnel

Company Credits

Production Co:

Another Sunday, BA Entertainment, DMZ Comics

Technical Specs

Runtime:

126 min

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Did You Know?

Goofs

When Jung-soo reaches Mi-Na, they discover her phone was damaged and cannot be used. She asks him if she can call someone. Without telling her the phone number she wants to call, he dials her mother on his own phone.

User Reviews

It's not just about survival...

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