Haeundae
Tags: dramatic, humor

Plot synopsis:
Located on the southeastern tip of the Korean Peninsula, the Haeundae district of Busan draws one million visitors to its beaches every year. Five years ago, Man-sik, a Haeundae local, lost Yeon-hee's father due to his mistake in the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake while deep-sea fishing together at the Indian Ocean. Because of this, Man-sik wasn't able to become involved with Yeon-hee, who runs an unlicensed seafood restaurant, despite her attempts to start a relationship (Yeon-hee does not know that her father was killed due to Man-sik's mistake).
Dong-choon and Seung-hyun's Grandma team up with Seung-hyun and gets involved with some 'illegal' activity to earn money, but the two end up getting caught by the police. Afterwards, Dong-choon's mother finds out that Man-sik's uncle (Eok-jo) was with her when the tsunami hit. She was worried about Dong-choon while Eok-jo was worried about Man-sik. Seung-hyun meets Ji-min and decides to prepare him for a job interview, but Dong-choon refuses. As time passes, Man-sik finally plans to propose to Yeon-hee on a night with fireworks.
Geologist Kim Hwi somehow runs into his divorced wife, Yoo-jin, who is preparing for an expo in Busan. Although Yoo-jin has a daughter named Ji-min (and also a new boyfriend named Hae-chan), they decide not to tell their daughter that he (Hwi) is her real father, afraid that Ji-min would be greatly surprised and shocked.
A wealthy college student from Seoul, Hee-mi, accidentally falls into the sea from a luxurious yacht. Hyeong-sik, Man-sik's younger brother, is a lifeguard who rescues Hee-mi rather 'violently'. Hee-mi becomes greatly angered by the 'violent' rescue and annoys him by following him around. But as time passes on, love starts to grow between them.
When Man-sik is walking to Yeon-hee, he finds Dong-choon. Man-sik becomes very angry. He chases Dong-choon and a bird crashes his car.
Meanwhile, Hwi notices that the East Sea is displaying similar activity to the Indian Ocean at the time of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake. The Disaster Prevention Agency assures him that South Korea is at no risk, but a megatsunami soon forms near Japan and starts to travel towards Haeundae. Hwi realizes that the citizens of Haeundae have only 10 minutes left to escape. There is a short earthquake (a little aftershock) at Haeundae; the elevator Yoo-jin is in stops perhaps due to the earthquake. The sea starts receding from the shore, causing mass hysteria on the beaches as people realize that a tsunami is coming. Thousands of people run for their lives, but the tsunami soon reaches Haeundae. Dong-choon, Seung-hyun, , jis Grandma , and other people on the Gwangan Bridge are swept away by the tsunami. A powerful electric shock from a telephone pole happens on the now-flooded street where Man-sik and Yeon-hee are on, electrocuting everyone in the water and those clinging onto metallic surfaces, but the two survive.
Dong-choon awakens on the bridge to find that a cargo ship has been lodged on one of the bridge's towers, and he tries to escape from the falling cargo containers from the ship. The containers are shown falling at an extreme momentum. Dong-choon survives this, and later on, he tries to light a cigarette while still on the bridge. His portable lighter ends up falling into petrol leaking from a tanker. A huge explosion results that cuts the bridge in half.
Hyeong-sik jumps down from a rescue helicopter and saves Hee-mi, who was far away in the sea with one of her friends. When Hyeong-sik and the friend are together on the rope, Hyeong-sik realizes that the rope is about to break and only one can go up to the helicopter. After a deep thought, Hyeong-sik cuts down the rope in which his body is connected to and falls down into the violent sea. The elevator Yoo-jin is in floods with water, and she talks with tears to her daughter on her portable phone. Soon, Yoo-jin is saved by a worker. On the roof of the building, Yoo-jin meets her daughter and Hwi. The two help their daughter get on a crowded rescue helicopter. Before the helicopter leaves, Hwi tells the truth to his daughter that he is really her father. Yoo-jin apologizes with tears to Hwi and they hug each other in front of a second tsunami before they are killed.
After the tsunami, there is a funeral for the hundreds of thousands of lifeguards and people who were killed in the tsunami. Among the ones who were killed is Hyeong-sik. Eok-jo is dead when a box hits him and Man-sik is heart broken. Dong-choon finds out that his mother was killed in the tsunami and he breaks into tears. People are shown helping to reconstruct the city. Man-sik, while cleaning the ruins of Yeon-hee's restaurant, finds the red ribbon which Yeon-hee's said was a 'yes' for his proposal. The movie ends with the scene of Haeundae in ruins, but in a hopeful atmosphere.

Review: Then, only then, show me what is happening so I can tremble when they run, cry if they die and laugh with joy if they survive.It was the first time I saw a korean film and I enjoyed every single piece of it.
It is good to have several story lines that work well to come together for a good wholesome story.The characters in the movie were good and believable, though some of the dialogue were cheezy at times.The effects of the movie were adequate, but of course you can see it is not a multi-million dollar Hollywood CGI fest going on.
But with that in mind, they made the effects work well enough.This movie is a good alternative to the usual comedies and horrors movie that mostly come out of Korea.
It also takes up some real life issues about tsunamies.In overall I think this movie is a good choice if you like disaster movies, and if you are tired of big Hollywood movies with superstar cast listings..
It therefore doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what an Asian take on disaster movies is gonna end up looking like: A melodramatic extravaganza.The first hour of Haeundae (also known as Tidal Wave in English) consists of setting up the table by presenting the cookie-cutter characters (played by a rather weak cast which tends to overact) and their clichés relationships.
I experienced quite a range of emotions whilst watching Haeundae (AKA Tidal Wave): the first hour, which is spent introducing its various clichéd two dimensional characters, was tedious in the extreme and I found myself impatiently urging the cataclysmic forces of nature to get a move on and wreak some havoc, thus putting an end to my misery; however, when the mega-tsunami finally hit, I felt rather guilty for having been so keen to see some death and destruction, the horrific sight of the massive wave crashing down on the helpless people of Korea immediately bringing to mind the very real scenes of destruction from the tsunami disaster of Christmas 2004.So I'm sitting there feeling morose, reflecting on the real-life horror of such a phenomenon—how terrifying it must be to be confronted by an unstoppable wall of water—when the film slips into cheesy post-tsunami mode, and I'm presented with umpteen tried-and-tested disaster movie clichés as the survivors face further danger amidst the floods.
These include the obligatory 'electrical cable in the water' routine, a well executed scene with a little girl being swept out of the window of a high rise building, and an awful slapstick moment that sees the film's comedy relief dodging metal containers as they fall from an upended freight ship.
I'm now feeling much better, having a blast with what I realise is cornball blockbuster material of the purest kind.And then a second wave hits the city, killing even more people, including the little girl's parents, and it's lump-in-throat time again!Although Haeundae doesn't qualify as an essential disaster flick in my book, the build up being overlong, the characters not all that memorable, and the formula predictable, the special effects are much better than I expected and the mayhem is spectacular enough to make this film worth a go if you get the chance.5.5 out of 10, rounded up to 6 for IMDb..
This lacklustre disaster flick should have been so good: it features tremendously good special effects scenes of 100-metre high waves tearing through a city, laying waste to anything and everything in their path.
These scenes alone are among some of the best bits I've ever watched in the whole disaster genre; destruction and mayhem on a massive scale, with carefully-crafted CGI bringing the chaos to full and authentic life.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.
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.
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.
We had 252: Signal of Life as the Japanese offering to the disaster genre earlier this year, and the Koreans too have decided to match that with Haeundae: The Deadly Tsunami.
With 252 it was the disaster hitting hard and fast first, followed by the shoving of human melodrama down your throat, and thankfully though Haeundae is quite the opposite, having the human drama established first without feeling forced, before the special effects extravaganza took over.So if you belong to Camp Impatient, then you're likely to feel bored as the film sought to introduce the ensemble characters, each with their respective back-stories and selfish reasons why they go about doing what they are doing, of course with repercussions all nicely built in as well for some karmic response.
Then there are others like the opposites attract with the coast guard and the free-spirited girl from Seoul, a seemingly scheming politician who's in some kind of en-bloc mess with the folks of the coastal village, a much maligned scientist and his estranged wife and daughter, and enough overbearing mothers.All these provided some 60 minutes worth of dramatic run time before it's time for Nature to hit back with its tidal waves, where quick response to an actual event will save lives, which stemmed from complacency creeping in when early warning signals went uncalled for.
Fear-inducing even, though there was one quick scene which seemed lifted from Hollywood's Deep Impact upon reconciliation of 2 characters in the face of impending doom.But of course budget dictated that the effects could only sustain the movie for a short while, and anything more than 2 wave cycles would probably either be cost-prohibitive, or just plain dragging out the misery of the characters in their preservation of lives.
Some fade-to-black-at-opportune-moments also came to the rescue of the film, and cheesiness reined comical supreme needlessly as well, though no efforts were spared in others especially the one involving the little girl left in the hotel room, providing that edge-of-your-seat thrills in what would be a literal roller-coaster ride in the last half hour.Haeundae served more as a disaster film without any preachy overtones regarding the preservation of the environment.
The director of this film, J.K. Youn, has been notorious for literally copying American comedy hits of the past and 'translating' them into Korean for quick bucks movies.
Haeundae is just a waste of resources (as well as your time if you care to watch this) for copycat filmmaker with no imagination and poor visual effects.Haeundae is not a disaster movie, it's major disaster itself!.
but I'm quite disappointed of what I saw after expecting so much from the trailer.First I'm Korean myself and was surprised to see such high CGI effect movie from a Korean director.Although D-war had quite great CGI , haeundae was the first disaster movie from Korea.The first part is just drama style comedy plot, which is not that great.
Tidal Wave (2009)** (out of 4) This South Korean disaster picture deals with a wide range of people who at first are trying to deal with their personal lives but this all changes when a tsunami hits and they must fight for their lives.
Apparently this film had the biggest budget for anything to come from South Korean and in fact I thought the special effects of the disaster looked pretty good but more on that in a bit.
It's clear that this film is just like so many American films in that we spend the majority of the running time getting to know the characters so that when the disaster does hit we care for them and want to see them survive.
The film certainly does come alive once the tsunami hits and I thought the special effects were extremely good on the whole.
TIDAL WAVE, on the whole, is a disappointment but fans of the genre will still want to check out the actual disaster bit..
I've seen quite a few disaster movies, and this one was disastrous.It began as a comedy and ended up a sorrowful one...
It's taken this long, until 2009, so many years after fellows in other Asian countries (like Japan or, well, Japan) have done the disaster-movie thing over and over, usually with monsters.
Perhaps Korea didn't have the budget for it - apparently, at a mere 11 million US, this is the biggest budgeted movie in Korean history, and it looks like a giant Titanic-movie as one might expect - or the intent with the subject matter.
The film, named after a shore-line city, follows a group of characters in a series of semi (or not at all) connected plots, including one with a man who previously caused the accidental death of another while they worked on a boat during tsunami 2004 and has to reconcile with his alcoholism and a possible new love, another with a new coast-guard worker and his (unintentional) love interest, and a guy working at the weather-control center who has a very estranged relationship with his ex and his daughter who doesn't even know he's her father (since, you know, he works non-stop at a weather center tracking earthquakes and the like).For the first hour, or maybe more, there are some big laughs and some entertainment to be had, if only on that shallow-surface level one might be familiar with in an Independence Day kind of fold-out (or for the older folks Towering Inferno).
And even with the shots of visual effects that look terrible (and some of it is SyFy level quality), when the actual tsunami hits the city it is quite a sight and thing to experience, especially with a full audience.
The problem that Yun comes with though is both the script, its uneven plot threads and hit-or-miss humor (some of it is very funny, intentionally so, including a giant explosion scene on a bridge during the tsunami climax), and in corralling some of the acting.From what I hear, some Korean movies do swing and sway quite wildly between moods from scene to scene, and it isn't usually consistent even in the best films (exceptions I think might be Bong Joon-Ho and Chanwook Park's films).
If you want a drama film that just happens to, eventually, have a tsunami in it this is what you are looking for..
Rest of the cast also does a near-perfect job.The action/disaster scenes of the film deserve a special mention as they are very neatly executed.
Visual effects are pretty impressive and enhance the film's entertainment to a great extent.The emotional scenes are impactful and have been executed with excellence.The story is quite good and the message of the film is appealing.Negatives:The only negative is that it takes too long to arrive at the main point.
Although the first half does showcase some good character development and makes us understand them even more, the comedic bits are at times overdone and could've been easily done away with.
In short, it's only the editing which is a major flaw.TIDAL WAVE is a decent disaster film which does take its own sweet time to build up, but it makes sure to reward the viewer for his/her patience, in the second half with excellent visual effects and action scenes..
Another aspect of the 101 of Asian film making (of course there are exceptions to the rule) is at least one goofy character who always has to be the clown, no matter how serious the topic of the movie may be.
The Titanic refused to sink!With this film (Tidal Wave)I did want the tsunami to arrive quickly.
The tsunami did arrive after the cheesy romantic start off and, mercifully, the film did end quickly On the plus side, the special effects were awesome!
If you expect a catastrophe movie with a lot of Hollywood action and many special effects in the key of "2012", stay away from this Korean flick.
If you are looking for a slice of life and would like to take a look on different story lines and diversified characters and how they live before, during and shortly after the disaster, you must check this movie out.
This slow paced rhythm though helps to get connected to the characters and will keep you on the edges of your seat when the tidal wave finally hits the surprisingly modern and beautiful city of Busan in South Korea.
I also regret that the movie didn't show that much of what happened to the different characters after the disaster.
The disaster itself is only a detail within the movie because this film is about something bigger than action, adventure or devastation.
If you intend to watch this and are expecting an action packed disaster film full of pretty images from start to finish, well then you'll likely be disappointed.This is a disaster flick, which takes it's time showing you the relationships it's various characters share.
No it's not a love story, but like Titanic you know what's going to happen, You also spend so much time with the various characters that you actually do care about what may or may not happen to them.I hope this helps those of you that may be undecided as to whether or not you want to see this film.
Painful mess of a movie concerning the people living in and around Haeundae (I believe thats the cities name) who go through various serious and comedic gyrations while officials debate the possibility of a tsunami like the one that hit on Christmas 2004 near Sumatra hitting Korea.
Even by standards of Asian films which often mix moods, this is a real uneven movie.One need only watch the disaster sequences to see how terrible tragedy is inter-cut with some very silly moments.
Of course it would help if we had some characters to root for but unfortunately there are only card board cut outs that are moved around.Then again I doubt anyone would watch this film for the story, what most people want is the spectacle of the Tsunami and on that score the film is pretty good.
I'm not sure its worth navigating through the talky bits of the first hour, but on DVD getting to the good stuff is going to be rather painless.At best a rental, this is really only for people who want to see the destruction of 50 or 60 story waves crashing into a big city.
But, the lives of these several characters go on for nearly an hour before we have some idea that a tsunami is about to strike Busan, a Korean city with a popular beach.
It's due to the first half of the movie, which was at times a bit difficult to bear, that you actually care about what happens to the people now.
Still it's 8 out of 10 for me.If you want a disaster movie with a good plot, that's your choice..
Additionally, while a tidal wave is the kind of disaster Americans reserve for a movie of the week, the immediacy of the disaster makes it more effective to the home audience than something that threatens the entire planet.For perspective, the American '2012' was released in Korea with the usual pomp and ceremony, but failed to impress because of its lack of story.
A tidal wave is real, possible and precedented; which goes a long way in explaining the film's popularity in country where Science-fiction is just another crazy thing that the Japanese do.That said, this movie is actually really, really bad.
Unfortunately, anyone who has seen more than two disaster movies sees exactly what they're doing and it's difficult to take such blatant and artless tear-jerker set-ups seriously.After Slacker ruins things between Daughter and Guilt-guy, Lifeguard realizes that Tourist-girl is probably psychotic, Scientist gets mad at Ex for leaving Little Girl unattended, and Slacker's Mom sets off to buy her son nice shoes for an interview; we get the tidal wave which feels less like a disaster than sweet relief from the two-dimensional melodrama we just spent an hour sitting through, wistfully guessing which of the undeveloped stock characters is going to die.The special effects sequence is passable, but lackluster as it is over way too fast (though you sort of have to expect that from a tidal wave) and the rest of the film is people trying to get rescued from the ensuing flood and a second, aftershock wave.
The emotional power of these scenes is undercut by a lot of elements; not surprising, given the weak build-up.The actors spend most of the film either being way to earnest or looking like even they can't believe they're doing this.
This is quite literally one of the best disaster movies I've ever watched, and I've seen most American-made ones of the last 45 years.
A lot of people complained about the build-up, the character development, which takes up probably 90% of the film.
If you're looking purely for a disaster film with little plot and emotion, don't go for this....
watch The Day After Tomorrow or Earthquake or 2012, but if you want your disaster mixed in with an emotional story about a tight-knit community on the coast with a storm looming in on them, then this is your film.
That too was a Korean Disaster Movie.
The character stories are okay, I guess, but I found them uninvolving.The tidal wave follows, which is fairly impressive for a lower-budget movie such as this.