Haeundae (2009) Review

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I watched Haeundae, starring Director Yoon Je-kyoon, Sol Kyung-gu, Ha Ji-won, Park Joong-hoon, and Uhm Jung-hwa. As everyone knows, this movie reached 10 million viewers, but it was not well-received by critics. Thinking back, most of Director Yoon Je-kyoon's films tend to have a gap between box office success and critical acclaim, and I think this movie might be the one where that gap was the most extreme. Initially, the most memorable audience review I saw for this film was a mocking one that said, "It's a true 10-million-viewer movie because no one will ever watch it a second time." After seeing that review, I gave up on watching it, not just in theaters but even on secondary markets. However, the reason I suddenly watched this movie is that I visited Haeundae last week (...). It was my first time visiting Haeundae in almost 20 years, and it has developed so much. That impression led me to watch the movie.
In 2004, five years prior to the story, Man-sik (Sol Kyung-gu), who was working as a crew member on his uncle Eok-jo's (Song Jae-ho) boat, loses Yeon-hee's (Ha Ji-won) father because Eok-jo insisted on fishing despite a typhoon warning. That incident became a trauma for him, and since Yeon-hee's father's dying wish was to take good care of her, Man-sik looks after her. Meanwhile, Kim Hwi (Park Joong-hoon), a geologist studying tsunamis, predicts that an earthquake in Tsushima, right next to Busan, could trigger a massive tsunami in Korea. He advises his ex-wife Yu-jin (Uhm Jung-hwa), who is organizing an international event in Busan, to cancel or postpone the event, but she won't listen at all. However, the tsunami becomes a reality, and the citizens living in Haeundae find themselves caught in the disaster...
Looking through Director Yoon Je-kyoon's filmography, I realized I have surprisingly watched almost all of his movies. As many of you know, while his films may lack depth, he is a director optimized for commercial success. I think Haeundae is the work where that aspect is most clearly demonstrated. (I believe Ode to My Father has more artistic merit than Haeundae.)
In my personal opinion, the biggest reason critics criticized this work at the time was that it was promoted as a disaster movie, but once it actually started, the disaster portion was only about 30% to 40% at most, while 60-70% was dedicated to character relationship building and comedy. The movie's runtime is 2 hours, but the disaster doesn't even begin until around the 1 hour and 10-minute mark, which is more than 50% of the runtime. On top of that, the latter half features the familiar "Korean-style melodrama" (shinpa)... To be honest, personally, the comedy wasn't particularly funny, perhaps because the movie is a bit old, but the character relationships were somewhat convincing.
There is no rule that a disaster movie must be 100% realistic, but there were many parts that were hard to understand. For instance, waves the size of houses are large enough to kill everyone on a building rooftop, yet someone clinging to a utility pole survives (...), or even though ship oil leaked, the Gwangan Bridge itself collapses just because it caught fire (...). Nevertheless, I think this movie successfully showcases Director Yoon Je-kyoon's strength: "a commercial film that is easy to watch."