The Tower (2012)

directed by Kim Ji-hoon

South Korea

121 minutes

3 stars out of 5

----

It's debatable whether or not this is technically a Christmas movie, even though it takes place on Christmas Day. The holiday is essentially just a backdrop, which is actually something I'll touch upon later because I felt that it could have been used much more effectively. This is mainly a disaster movie, something South Korea's film industry seems to do pretty well, and even though it doesn't diverge too far from the standard model of a disaster film, it's still good for casual viewing, if not an in-depth, critical watch.

There's a whole lot of characters in this bad boy and the first half-hour is dedicated to making sure you know who all of them are. The set-up is fairly typical for disaster movies in that a lot, if not all, of the characters are established as having something (usually someone) left hanging; a promise that they must go back and fulfill. They make a vow to someone they love, whether literal or unspoken, and that hangs over them for the entirety of the film, so that whenever they're in mortal peril we think of who or whatever they would be leaving behind. It's a pretty standard grab for our heartstrings, but nearly every film with high stakes does it at some point, so it's just a spectrum with one end being bland and emotionless and the other end being the handful of movies in which the trope is pulled off well (Train to Busan, for one other South Korean example). It does feel obvious that the romantic connections and family obligations here are being set up from the start, but in this instance I think it's done pretty well and manages to hit the emotional beats without feeling too forced.

The film takes place in a massive apartment complex consisting of two glass towers connected by a sky bridge, housing something like 5700 people as well as fine dining and everything else that typically comes with a luxury apartment. Most of the people who live and work there are extremely rich, but there are some less wealthy who can get in by winning a lottery, as well as many underpaid and overworked cleaning and kitchen staff. To create the most dazzling experience possible for the residents, who by now expect a high standard of living, a squadron of helicopters is called in to drop synthetic snow over the area of the towers so that everyone can have a white Christmas. This hubris is what leads to the literal downfall of the towers when a helicopter crashes in the high winds and sets one of the towers on fire, trapping and killing many of the residents, who must now fight their way to the bottom and try to survive.

I guess there's supposed to be a point being made about inequality here, but to me the movie didn't push it strongly enough. The mayor of Seoul is as out-of-touch as the rich residents of the towers and is behind the decisions that repeatedly ignore the people still trapped and struggling in the building and categorize them as beyond rescue without even trying. He's presented with a list of people inside the building ordered according to "priority" and asked for his word on who to save and who to leave behind like some of them don't matter. The people inside the building must continually fight against measures taken to save the few in favor of the many, such as firewalls that isolate them from any hope of exit and eventually the full demolition of the building.

But there's just no real emphasis behind it. Yes, a lot of the rich people are shown as annoying and bullying anyone they view as weaker than them. But for the most part, no fault is established. In my opinion the most horrible part of this movie was the reason behind the fire, not because the elites who ordered a fancy fake snow display were innocent, but because they wrapped people who were innocent up into their egotism. This parallels real life, somewhat, in that the super-wealthy will continue to do things for their own enjoyment or because it's more convenient to keep doing them even though they're actively dangerous and destroying the environment, and it's not them who suffer, it's all of us who they drag along for the ride. The movie doesn't really acknowledge this, though, and we never see anybody get held accountable or anything like that.

The reason why I felt like the Christmas motif was underused is because a lot of the time Christmas movies are used to highlight inequality: the end message of A Christmas Carol might be basically to not be a dick, but it also explicitly involves treating everyone right and not hoarding wealth for yourself. The Tower just kind of happens to be set on Christmas for no particular reason other than aesthetics. To be fair, Christmas is not, at least originally, a Korean holiday, so the use of it as a soapbox to talk about inequality doesn't have as much (or any) history there as it might in the West. But I'm certain that by now most people are familiar with A Christmas Carol as well as other similar media, and maybe this is too optimistic of me, but even if they weren't, I would hope that any holiday centered around giving and togetherness would inspire feelings of empathy for all humans.

In the end this movie probably isn't worth how much I'm talking about it. It is just fine as an action/disaster movie, and some parts do get a little emotional, particularly the end. The CGI seemed pretty solid but the file I was watching was in such poor quality that those flames could have been orange tissue paper and they still would have looked real to me. I am surprised that this isn't more popular, but I guess it just feels a little too generic next to the other, better Korean disaster films out there. You could do much worse, though, and I definitely got involved in the characters and the lengths they had to go to keep themselves alive. Good one for if you, like me, live in a place where it snows on Christmas maybe one year out of every ten.