“Tunnel” Tops Korean Box Office for Fourth Straight Week
Has any ROK Heads seen this movie yet and can testify how good it really is?:
Korean disaster flick “Tunnel” has claimed the top spot at the box office for the fourth weekend in a row, data showed Monday.
According to the official box office tally from the Korean Film Council (KOFIC), a state agency for promoting homegrown films, the movie added 344,332 to its domestic total of 6,942,566 over Sept. 2-4.
Starring Ha Jung-woo, Bae Doona and Oh Dal-su, the film has topped the daily box office chart for 26 straight days, the longest period for any film that opened this year.
It surpassed the 6 million mark on Aug. 27, the 18th day of running, becoming the sixth film that reached the milestone this year in the country. The film is soon expected to hit the 7 million barrier.
Directed by Kim Seong-hun, the film portrays the desperate struggle of a car salesman who accidentally gets trapped inside a collapsed tunnel on his way home from work. His wife and the rescue team captain make every effort to save him but are confronted with politicians and people who do not want a development plan to be delayed to rescue a single person who may have already died. [Yonhap]
You can read more at the link.
Saw it this afternoon (North America), and thought it was pretty good. The sentiment is not overdone, and seems well-earned. The hero bears up under adversity, as does the wife, so it’s not too mawkish. One thing that bothers me is that it testifies yet again (see any K-drama) to the widespread belief among Koreans that their society is corrupt to the extent that politicians and businesspeople particularly are not particularly interested in making things okay for ordinary folk. I don’t know whether or not this actually true, but the performance of the rescue services during the ferry disaster a couple of years back would seem to give credit to the notion on some level. I wondered in fact, as I watched, whether the movie wasn’t a comment on that particular disaster. Still, very enjoyable flick, a good one, not a great one, and it has a puppy too (SPOILER: the puppy makes it).