{"id":34004,"date":"2020-10-23T14:18:51","date_gmt":"2020-10-23T18:18:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=34004"},"modified":"2020-10-23T14:20:49","modified_gmt":"2020-10-23T18:20:49","slug":"ashfall-2019","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2020\/10\/23\/ashfall-2019\/","title":{"rendered":"Ashfall (2019)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>A very long dormant volcano blows up on Korea, forcing officials to do all they can to keep it from blowing up again in a much worse manner.<\/p>\n

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This grand scale disaster film from writers Byung-seo Kim, Tae-Yoon Kim, Jeong-deok Kwak, Hae-jun Lee, and Joon-hyung Lim and directors Byung-seo Kim and Hae-jun Lee is one that is fun and fast paced for the majority of the runtime and then slows down near the end. The film follows a lot of the usual disaster fiction tropes, but makes them work for it in a good way. The story has a few surprises, giving the viewer some mystery and some twists. As it\u2019s a pretty classic disaster film, the general feel of the film is familiar and so are the beats throughout the story, but somehow it works, so don\u2019t fix it.<\/p>\n

The cast here is a fun with our hero\u2019s being varied in types and goodness of character. Byung-hun Lee is definitely the stand out here, giving a strong, yet nuanced performance that brings the viewer in and makes them care about his character who may or may not be a bad guy, and who for sure is a complex character. His work here is something that adds to the film and takes it out of the tropes to make it more than a disaster film of week. It\u2019s his work that really sells the film. Playing his counterpart is Jung-woo Ha who balances him out just the right way. Also playing his character in an interesting and entertaining manner is Dong-seok Ma as the much ignored at first scientist who gets his time to shine. Of course, a plethora of other characters come and go, with some getting more time and all the performances for these characters work well within their parts.<\/p>\n

Outside of the above, the film is very much a disaster film with a touch of extra, so the music is epic in spots and the cinematography shows the disaster loud and clear, while the effects assist everything. It\u2019s a high budget film that spends its money wisely.<\/p>\n

Ashfall is an entertaining, higher budget disaster film with a touch of Korean drama in there for balance (?) and it\u2019s an easy watch. The runtime at 128 minutes does end up feeling a bit long near the end, but it is still a good watch for fans of the genre.<\/p>\n

The Blu Ray disc release looks great with a fantastic image and sound quality and a couple of extras (making-of, character trailer, and trailer), so it\u2019s pretty quick to go around the everything on there.<\/p>\n