Tunnel (2016 film)

Lee Jung-soo (Ha Jung-woo) is driving home for his daughter's birthday. While driving through a tunnel through a mountain, the tunnel collapses. When Lee Jung-Soo regains consciousness, he finds himself trapped inside his car, which is buried under tons of concrete and debris. All he has inside the car are his cellphone, two bottles of water, and his daughter's birthday cake.

South Korea is horrified by the news of the collapse of a large tunnel. The government urgently sets up an accident task force. Daekyung (Oh Dal-su), the rescue captain of the accident task force, makes various attempts to enter the tunnel, but the structure is only slow. Meanwhile, Jeong-su's wife Se-hyun (Bae Doo-na) delivers hope to her husband through the radio, which Jung-su can only hear, and does not give up hope for his safe life. The sluggish rescue operation will eventually cause a major setback in the completion of the second tunnel nearby, and public opinion begins to divide over the survival and structure of the essence.

Many audiences who watched the movie said that it was reminiscent of the Sinking of MV Sewol in 2014. However, the film was based on an original novel published before the MV Sewol incident. Director Kim Sung-hoon said in an interview, "It (sinking of MV Sewol) was such a big pain and the production team was also very sick." "Since the sadness is still valid, I couldn't help but think of the sinking of MV Sewol when I made the disaster material film, but I thought it was impossible to exclude the memory and take it." On the one hand, " one incident rather than focusing on pursuant to a huge disaster happened, and universal since the system should be run by him collapsed."and some by a man trapped in it" want to say things like dignity for the life situation."[6]

Although ‘Tunnel’ is doing a lot of box office hits, some pointed out its regret. The somewhat optimistic attitude of ‘Tunnel’ is not realistic.[7] It may be because after the disaster of Ferry Sewol, Korean audiences witnessed how the social system of disaster works. The director explained that he also saw such opinions. He said in an interview, "There were some opinions that want me to be more directly explained. However, I hoped that this movie would not be a movie that only people who are angry about such a disaster would watch. Some movies portray social evil and get angry with the system, and they can scratch people's emotions like that." He also continued to add the last sentence. "I wanted the movie to be more sympathetic to pain. I think what we are doing the most is the lack of ability to empathize with other people's pain."[8]

The director added, "I put a lot of effort into organizing the tunnel set in the movie." As the inside of the collapsed tunnel continues to appear, he wanted to devise the most realistic part of the movie. "One of the words that can describe this movie is its texture. I thought the texture should not look fake. For Jeong-su, the tunnel is like an actor. The actors and the space have to give and receive reactions from each other." he said. In the set, the real concrete part and the fake part were mixed together. He made a fake one on the close side of the actor and put a real one on the real one on the far side. Fake materials are not only concrete, but also cement-finished stones. As dust powder, grain powder, charcoal powder, and jade powder were all used. It is said that it was because the actual cement powder could be dangerous if inhaled by an actor, as the dust was scattered throughout the movie.[9]

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 100% of 15 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 7.6/10.[11]

• Tunnel at IMDb
• Tunnel (Teoneol) (2016) at Rotten Tomatoes