It took me an almost embarrassingly long time to realize that the new South Korean disaster thriller from filmmaker, Han Jae-rim, is often amusingly similar to the plot of the classic 1980 comedy Airplane!, and by extension, the 1957 disaster film it was spoofing, Zero Hour! Except, instead of food poisoning, the plane in Emergency Declaration is dealing with an infectious disease brought on board by a creepy passenger, Ryu Jin-seok (Yim Si-wan), who unleashes a vial in a bathroom, and watches as chaos quickly unfolds, both in the plane, and on the ground below as authorities try to solve the situation as safely and as quickly as possible.
With that comparison being made, you’d think a film that evokes elements we’ve seen parodied for literal decades would make it dead on arrival. However, what Han is able to do here is create a plot that is on paper quite ludicrous, but is given just the right balance of realism and heightened melodrama. It’s a film that manages to play things relatively straight, but knows how to indulge in some of the more over-the-top plot beats without necessarily breaking the reality of the film itself. It keeps you engaged and invested despite how wild things may go.
A big part of this is due to the characters. We meet these folks like the former pilot with the traumatic past who is now caught up this wild situation on a plane, played here by Lee Byung-hun, or the detective who is doing everything he can to figure out who is behind the attack, and help create a plan of action because he has family on the plane, played by the great Song Kang-ho, or Jeon Do-yeon’s Sook-hee, a government minister who is facing pressure from every possible angle to create a solution, among many others. Many of these are classic archetypes, sure, but the actors give these roles the right amount of conviction to really sell the drama.
The film is fairly well put together. Kim Woo-Hyun’s editing creates a good rhythm that plays with the rising tension and more explosive moments, as well as holding on the more heart wrenching scenes for maximum impact. There are some pretty fun choices made with the camera as well, particularly in a car chase where we stay inside the car, keeping our focus on the subject that is being chased. The production design is also worth noting as it keeps a reasonably realistic look to everything from the interior of the plan, to the emergency camps set on the ground. Even the extensive VFX work for exterior plane shots are really solid across the board.
Even with some of the tropes and clichés that are present throughout Emergency Declaration, Han Jae-rim is able to throw a couple surprises and interesting detours along the way, even up until the very end, which takes an unexpected direction before it gets to the actual finale. I found the film to be quite riveting and really engaging. It’s propulsive throughout its near two-and-a-half hour runtime, and there’s hardly a moment in here where I was bored. Enough wrenches are thrown into the situation to allow it to evolve in interesting ways, such as the plane being denied the chance to land on Japan and U.S. soil because of concerns about the disease, and through most of the film, I was constantly thinking to myself, “OK, how are they gonna handle this?, what are they gonna do now?, how are they gonna get out of this one?” Yes, it can be silly at times, but I was invested in the story and characters, I wanted to see how it would conclude. It’s the kind of disaster film that doesn’t rely on spectacle as a crutch, and it works all the better because of that. It might not necessarily be the movie of the year for anybody, but it’s a solid genre exercise, and it’s often you see this genre executed with as much care as this does.
Emergency Declaration is now out in select theaters.