A woman named Yeon-hee (Ha Ji-won) lives in Busan with her boyfriend Man-sik (Sol Kyung-gu) near Haeundae Beach. But, when they find out a tsunami will hit the city, They realize they only h... Read allA woman named Yeon-hee (Ha Ji-won) lives in Busan with her boyfriend Man-sik (Sol Kyung-gu) near Haeundae Beach. But, when they find out a tsunami will hit the city, They realize they only have 10 minutes to escape!A woman named Yeon-hee (Ha Ji-won) lives in Busan with her boyfriend Man-sik (Sol Kyung-gu) near Haeundae Beach. But, when they find out a tsunami will hit the city, They realize they only have 10 minutes to escape!
- Director
- Writer
- Stars
- Awards
- 6 wins & 13 nominations
- Ji-Min
- (as Kim Yoo-jeong)
- Choi Man-shik
- (as Kyung-gu Sol)
- Lee Yu-jin
- (as Jeong-hwa Eom)
- Yeon-Hee
- (voice)
- Hee-mee
- (as Ye-won Kang)
- Choi's uncle
- (as Jae-ho Song)
- Kim Hwi
- (as Joong-Hoon Park)
- Dong-chun's mother
- (as Byeong-sook Seong)
- Seung-hyeon
- (as Bo-geun Cheon)
- Jun-ha
- (as Ho-min Yeo)
- Man-Sik
- (voice)
- Director
- Writer
- All cast & crew
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaThe CGI tsunami sequences had been shot at Kerner Optical's stages using water-dump tanks left over from special effects sequences of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008) in San Rafael, California in November and December 2008, months before any principal photography began in South Korea
- GoofsWhen the grandmother is watching the wave come in on the bridge, an aerial point-of-view shot shows the wave yet the height of the water around the footings remains constant.
- Quotes
Helicopter Pilot: We need to adjust those settings, this doesn't look right.
Emergency Room Intern: James, James! James! We need to look at this. Something strange.
[He shows the man the paper]
Helicopter Pilot: Oh my god!
Emergency Room Intern: Why am I jumping to this? Just listen up! Move the people somewhere higher okay! It's the Tsunami!
- ConnectionsReferences The Matrix (1999)
It's a shame, then, that the surrounding movie is so poor. Tidal Wave takes an hour to get to the disaster stuff, and until that time we're treated to Korean comedy. Now, I don't mind a bit of comedy, the quirkier the better; THE HOST had a lot of fun moments. But this comedy is something else, the comedy of ridiculous characters behaving ridiculously, almost on a sub-slapstick standard. The over-the-top acting is absolutely appalling; I avoid American comedies on principle but this is even worse than those.
Of course, disaster movies always have to build up to the disaster, and I fully understand the need to develop the characters before dropping them in the clag. But, in my mind, the film should always be about the disaster, even before it occurs: have characters making warnings that are unheeded, or build suspense and foreboding with minor events preceding it. DANTE'S PEAK is a case in point of how to achieve this. TIDAL WAVE sits in a completely different, and entirely superfluous, genre until the actual disaster occurs.
Once the chaos gets underway, things get a lot better, although there's a reliance on overwrought melodrama which will test the patience of even the most hardened viewer, I imagine. Endless scenes of characters facing death, drawn out in painful slow-motion and with maximum crying, screaming, sobbing and telling each other they love them. Such scenes are a personal pet hate of mine, and they threaten to overwhelm the film even when the going gets good. It's a real shame, as with access to those special effects TIDAL WAVE could have, and should have, been a true great.
- Leofwine_draca
- Sep 24, 2012
Details
- Release date
- Country of origin
- Official sites
- Languages
- Also known as
- Tsunami
- Filming locations
- San Rafael, California, USA(CGI sequences)
- Production companies
- See more company credits at IMDbPro
Box office
- Budget
- ₩10,000,000 (estimated)
- Gross worldwide
- $71,283,278
- Runtime2 hours
- Color
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 2.35 : 1