Review | Ashfall film review: Ha Jung-woo, Lee Byung-hun brave volcanic eruption in Korean disaster thriller
- This star-studded story of a mission to North Korea to steal nuclear weapons tries too hard to please everyone
- The relentless explosions, shoot-outs and destruction take away from a promising storyline
2.5/5 stars
When a long dormant volcano threatens to destroy half of the Han Peninsula, the biggest stars in Korean cinema are assembled to save the day. Combining the collective blockbuster attractions of disaster movie, action thriller, family melodrama, and buddy comedy, Ashfall erupts in a pungent cloud of lofty ambition and epic scale.
But when the ash settles, what remains on screen is the molten wreckage of a high concept crowd-pleaser that, in its efforts to be everything for everyone, ends up delivering precious little to anyone at all.
Lee Hae-jun, writer-director of Castaway on the Moon, shares scriptwriting and directorial duties with prolific cinematographer Kim Byung-seo ( Along with the Gods ). They have assembled an audacious cast, headed by Ha Jung-woo.
As Captain Cho In-chang, Ha plays a war veteran and bomb disposal expert, who abandons his heavily pregnant wife (Bae Suzy) to lead a covert operation into North Korea. His mission is to steal a cache of nuclear warheads, which are to be used in preventing a cataclysmic volcanic eruption.
Conceived by Ma Dong-seok’s Professor Kang and Jeon Hye-jin’s Security Secretary, the mission also requires Cho to find and collaborate with untrustworthy Northern defector, Major Ri Jun-pyong (Lee Byung-hun).
This staggeringly high-concept premise pummels its holiday audience with a relentless barrage of urban destruction, high-calibre shoot-outs, and deafening explosions, interrupted by nefarious foreign powers, fractious North-South relations, and an abundance of comedic asides involving tasers and handcuffs.
At its core is the uneasy alliance forged by Ha’s mission commander and Ri’s duplicitous double agent. Cho is goofier than many of Ha’s recent leading men, more comfortable with a pair of wire cutters in his hand than an assault rifle.
Ri, meanwhile, threatens to sell out the mission at any moment for his own personal gain, but as the story unfolds it comes as no surprise to learn that they have more in common than at first appears.
Unfortunately, this leaves most of the rest of the cast largely sidelined, not least Ma Dong-seok, who is criminally underused as a Princeton academic desperate to escape back to the US rather than help implement his ridiculous plan.
Amid all the hot air and fiery spectacle, Ashfall reluctantly acknowledges that the country’s greatest threat comes from within, and can only be thwarted if the North and South are able to work together. But any notion of political commentary is quickly engulfed by the film’s relentless, and ultimately soulless, thirst for mass destruction.
