Don't listen to the negative reviews

An Exercise In Nonsense

It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

What a weird movie. First thing to notice is, that the visual of the film looks pretty ok. Some decent camera work was definetely one of the stronger sides of Tidal Wave aka Haeundae. Being a Korean disaster movie I already had some worries due to experiences in the past with movies coming from Asia. And I didn't have to wait long. Immediately those horrible nonsense dialogues came up, causing that you won't like any of the characters at all. Basically everybody without a high degree of any sort falls into this category and all the interactions and relations don't matter anymore. You just want the wave erase 95% of the cast right from the spot and show us epic slow motion shots of how entires cities get washed away. Romantic aspects, and there were quite a few which were forced upon us all fall flat and appear unrealistic. The funny thing is, they are not! Living in Asia myself I can tell first hand that romantic issues are handled a lot more different, very indirect and seemingly naive. It may be authentic to a certain point, but it is definetely painful to watch. 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. As if there is a Comedy quota that has to be reached by any means. And yes, Tidal Wave deals with all of these flaws excessively. And this makes most of these films nearly unwatchable. The only good aspects of this movie are indeed the disaster elements themself, even though they rely on extreme usage of CGI as far as the eye can see. Some of these shots were really epic and fun to watch. But what does this help if you have suffer through this gruesome acting? Sad to say, but this movie would have been beeter if they wouldn't have even bothered in building up characters or relations of any kind and instead simply go nuts on epic destruction. 10 to 15 good minutes won't erase over one hour of uselessness.

Straight to the point.This is not an American movie. 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. The disaster is always looming and by the time it occurs you are deeply invested in the characters.Again thins is not an American disaster flick. If you want nonstop action go somewhere else.I would compare this movie to James Cameron's Titanic. 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. .

Disaster movies have been fine-tuned by Hollywood into a fairly reliable and polished formula. One of the ingredient is usually a good dose of melodrama. Now, Asian cinema as well, is known to spice movies with melodramatic bits. 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. The script and story is pretty standard for the genre (you've seen all of this in Twister, Armageddon, many of Emmerich's movies and so on) but the writing is just... immature. As if the script came straight from a high school play. I must still praise some of the comedy bits, which are indeed funny and make certain characters more likable. Unfortunately, the dramatic bits are as (unintentionally) funny as the comedic ones and that is a problem. The final part of the film is where the disaster unleashes and ends up being a poor payoff. The special effects, cinematography, editing are uninspired. This film suffers from poor direction and you immediately feel like you'd rather catch an old disaster flick on cable TV. But what absolutely kills the disaster scenes are the tear-jerking attempts. It's like the director is trying to squeeze a dehydrated fruit and fill a glass with orange juice. It still deserves a 3 because there is some heart to it and it maintains your interest with some of the quirky characters. Plus a few comedic bits are also worth it. But if you're not a fan of the genre, expect a big waste of time.

I watched this film with such excitement. 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. It get's boring, and I tend to forget that I was watching a disaster movie. About hour later the movie past, first real disaster occurs. When the tsunami hit Haeundae, it was quite something, the effects were well done, and outlined the problems that would occur well. But I'm disaspointted to see only one disaster occurring. After all this wait in the movie, there's only about 10 minutes of the tsunami. Rest is just back to normal drama plot.